ABSTRACT
The Fe-SMA plates covering crack-stop holes method is presented to repair cracks of the diaphragm cutouts in orthotropic steel bridge decks. The activated Fe-SMA plate can increase the local stiffness and introduce precompression in the cracked region of steel plates. The recovery stresses of Fe-SMA with the pretension strain of 4% and activation temperatures of 150, 200, and 250 °C are 192.3, 226.4, and 270.8 MPa respectively, which can meet the requirement of cracking steel plates. The temperature of the non-activated region is maintained below the glass transition temperature of the adhesive during activating, indicating that the activation operation has little effect on the bonding performance between the Fe-SMA plate and the diaphragm. With activating Fe-SMA, compression stresses of 44.2 MPa–63.9 MPa are introduced at the hole edge. The stress at the hole edge is reduced by 66.65% through bonding the Fe-SMA plate.
