ABSTRACT
Orthotropic steel deck (OSD) has been applied on many bridges around the world. However, the drawback of being prone to fatigue problems also limits its widespread application in many cases. Fatigue cracks initiated from the cutout in rib-to-floor beam has different fatigue nature than that of welded components, thus need to be investigated in a distinguishing way. To study the effect of notch radius on fatigue performance of cutout detail, specimens with three different kinds of geometries have been manufactured and tested with fatigue load. The fatigue life of specimens and their crack initiation locations were obtained. Prediction of fatigue life of notched specimen based on the theory of critical distance (TCD) was conducted. The results show that Eurocode is conservative on the classification of fatigue performance of cutout, and the application of TCD on fatigue life prediction of notched specimen has good agreement with experimental results.
