Fatigue Reliability and Remaining Fatigue Life of Existing Steel Rail-Road Bridges

강철도교의 피로신뢰성과 잔존피로수명

This paper presents a fatigue reliability model for the reliability-based evaluation of remaining fatigue life of existing rail-road bridges. It is demonstrated that the simple fatigue reliability model based on the Weibull distribution of fatigue life can be extended by incorporating various effects due to the rate of the train-traffic increase and in-service Inspections. The paper also suggests the system fatigue reliability analysis using an approximate formulation and 2nd-order bound solutions. The application of the proposed model to existing rail-road brdiges based on field load tests shows that it may be practically used for the assessment of fatigue reliability, remaining life, and in-service inspection scheduling of existing rail-road bridges.