IMPROVING THE FATIGUE PERFORMANCE OF INTEGRAL BRIDGE STEEL H-PILES VIA SPECIAL DESIGN DETAILING

2022-07-20
Dicleli, Murat
Karalar, Memduh
In integral bridges (IBs), when the steel H-piles (SHPs) at the abutments are subjected to large strain amplitudes due to thermal induced displacements, the presence of axial load, depending on the flexural strain level, is experimentally observed to decrease the low cycle fatigue life (LCFL) of the pile. This is mainly due to local buckling of the flanges of the SHP under the effect of compressive strains from the axial load and high compressive plastic strains due to the effect of bending. Local buckling increases the local curvature and strains. This locally accelerates the cracking of the material resulting in earlier fracture of the material and associated reduction in the LCFL of the SHPs. To prevent this local buckling occurring at high strain amplitudes, longitudinal stiffeners may be placed at the tip of the flanges of the SHP. To investigate the effect of these stiffeners on the LCFL of SHPs, numerical simulations and experimental testing of a number of regular and stiffened SHPs under cyclic displacement reversals (simulating thermal induced displacements in the SHPs) are conducted. It is observed that stiffening the flanges of the SHP in the region of maximum flexural strains significantly improves the LCFL of SHPs used in integral bridges.
11 th International Conference on Short and Medium Span Bridges
Citation Formats
M. Dicleli and M. Karalar, “IMPROVING THE FATIGUE PERFORMANCE OF INTEGRAL BRIDGE STEEL H-PILES VIA SPECIAL DESIGN DETAILING,” presented at the 11 th International Conference on Short and Medium Span Bridges, Ontario, Kanada, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/107415.