ABSTRACT
The effect of thermal load on bridges which is comparable with that of traffic load becomes a more and more significant issue nowadays. To guide the fatigue design of bridges correctly when taking thermal effect into consideration, this paper displays the research progress on thermal effect and temperature-induced fatigue of bridges. Based on temperature monitoring and statistical analysis, standard values of the temperature difference were used as the parameter of the temperature gradient patterns. With a decomposition of the thermal load, the thermal stress for fatigue category details were decomposed accordingly. Then the fatigue damage caused by thermal stress was calculated based on S-N curves and Miner’s cumulative damage theory. In this paper, the 100-year return period standard values of the vertical and horizontal temperature difference are concluded depending on the bridge types. In addition, simplified thermal fatigue load model was proposed followed by the analysis method on temperature-induced fatigue damage.
