• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.443-451
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• 2007

The improvement of stiffness by the increase of thickness of deck plate or the reinforcement of longitudinal rib is one method among the effective methods to control fatigue damages occurring in orthotropic steel deck. It is likely that the increase of stiffness is effective to restrain local deformation caused by axial load in the steel deck. Therefore, in this study, the parameter studies for the reinforced structural details such as the bulk-head plate and vertical rib which is established to reduce the resultant stresses in the connection parts of the longitudinal rib and floor beam were performed with FE analysis. From the results, it was known that the reinforced structural detail with the bulk-head plate in the longitudinal ribs reduced overall the principal stresses at the connection parts, but the stress concentration increased in the weld toe parts which are occurring fatigue cracks. Also, it was estimated that the reinforced structural detail with the vortical rib in the longitudinal ribs because of the reduction of stress concentration in the weld toe parts is more effective details than the bulk-head plate.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.98-106
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• 2011

The deck of steel box girder bridges is composed of deck plate, longitudinal rib, and transverse ribs. The orthotropic steel decks have high possibility to fatigue damage due to numbers of welded connection part, the heavy contact loadings, and the increase of repeated loadings. Generally, the local stress by the repeated loadings of heavy vehicles causes the orthotropic steel deck bridge to fatigue cracks. The increase of traffic volume and heavy vehicle loadings are promoted the possibility of fatigue cracks. Thus, it is important to exactly evaluate the structural behavior of bridge considering the contact loading area of heavy vehicles and real load patterns of heavy trucks which have effects on the bridge. This study estimated the effect of contact area of design loads and real traffic vehicles through the finite element analysis considering the real loading conditions. The finite element analysis carried out 4 cases of loading patterns in the orthotropic steel deck bridge. Also, analysis estimated the influence of contact area of real truck loadings by the existence of diaphragm plate. The result of finite element analysis indicated that single tire loadings of real trucks occurred higher local stress than one of design loadings, and especially the deck plate got the most influence by the single tire loading. It was found that the diaphragm attachment at joint part of longitudinal ribs and transverse ribs had no effects on the improvement of structural performance against fatigue resistance in elastic analysis.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.439-447
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• 2011

Longitudinal cracks due to traffic truck loadings that are caused by local deformations of steel orthotropic bridge decks are sometimes observed in the wearing surface. So, underlying causes of the longitudinal pavement crack induced by structural behaviors of steel decks are investigated in this study. For this purpose, The rational finite element model of the steel deck and the pavement having the box girder is developed and a parametric study is performed by varying thickness or elastic modulus ratios of both the steel deck plate and the pavement. As a result, a large tensile strain above the webs of the u-rib and the box girder, which becomes the main cause of the cracks of the pavement, is detected from variation of the normal strain component of the wearing surface in the transverse direction.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2002

Many of the bridge systems, including the girders and cross-beams, and concrete decks behave as the special orthotropic plates. Such systems with boundary conditions other than Navier or Levy solution types, or with irregular cross sections, analytical solution is very difficult to obtain. Numerical method for eigenvalue problems are also very much involved in seeking such a solution. A method of calculating the natural frequency corresponding to the first mode of vibration of beam and tower structures with irregular cross-sections was developed and reported by Kim in 1974. Recently, this method was extended to two dimensional problems including composite laminates, and has been applied to composite plates with shear deformation effects. In this paper, application of this method to the specially orthotropic laminated plates with various boundary condition is accomplished and the result of analysis is presented.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.17-34
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• 2022

For steel structures, fatigue cracks are critical damage induced by long-term cycle loading and distortion effects. Vision-based crack detection can be a solution to ensure structural integrity and performance by continuous monitoring and non-destructive assessment. A critical issue is to distinguish cracks from other features in captured images which possibly consist of complex backgrounds such as handwritings and marks, which were made to record crack patterns and lengths during periodic visual inspections. This study presents a parametric study on image-based crack identification for orthotropic steel bridge decks using captured images with complicated backgrounds. Firstly, a framework for vision-based crack segmentation using the atrous convolution-based Deeplapv3+ network (ACDN) is designed. Secondly, features on crack images are labeled to build three databanks by consideration of objects in the backgrounds. Thirdly, evaluation metrics computed from the trained ACDN models are utilized to evaluate the effects of obstacles on crack detection results. Finally, various training parameters, including image sizes, hyper-parameters, and the number of training images, are optimized for the ACDN model of crack detection. The result demonstrated that fatigue cracks could be identified by the trained ACDN models, and the accuracy of the crack-detection result was improved by optimizing the training parameters. It enables the applicability of the vision-based technique for early detecting tiny fatigue cracks in steel structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.569-584
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• 2009

Corrosion of steel rebars in bridge decks which are faced to harsh conditions, is a common problem in construction industries due to the porosity of concrete. In this research, the behavior of one-way concrete slabs reinforced with Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) molded grating is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. In the analytical method, a closed-form solution for load-deflection behavior of a slab under four-point bending condition is developed by considering a concrete slab as an orthotropic plate and defining stiffness coefficients in principal directions. The available formulation for concrete reinforced with steel is expanded for concrete reinforced with GFRP molded grating to predict ultimate failure load. In finite element modeling, an exact nonlinear behavior of concrete along with a 3-D failure criterion for cracking and crushing are considered in order to estimate the ultimate failure load and the initial cracking load. Eight concrete slabs reinforced with steel and GFRP grating in various thicknesses are also tested to verify the results. The obtained results from the models and experiments are relatively satisfactory.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.419-430
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• 2014

On going researches which are being made on the welded joints at the intersections of closed ribs such as U-ribs with floor-beams in ortho-tropic steel decks still have been used the shape of scallops with or with not diaphragm inside. Stress Relief Hole(SRH) being presented in this study was investigated in order to reduce the fatigue damage in the intersections of U-rib with floor-beam. Finally, it is verified that circular SRHs sufficiently relief the concentration stress at the intersections of U-rib with floor-beam and shows that SRH can be offer one of the methods that can prevent the fatigue damage in these structural details.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.839-844
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• 2007

In order to reduce resultant stress of the connection detail of longitudinal and rib and floor beam, in this study, the parameter studies for the reinforcement details as the bulk head and the vertical rib were preformed with FE analysis. As the result, it was shown that reinforcement detail with the bulk head plate in longitudinal rig reduced generally the principal stress at the connection detail, but the stress concentration of the weld toe parts occurring fatigue crack increased. However, it was known that the reinforcement detail with the vertical rib in the rib is more effective than the bulk head plate of the reduction stress concentration in the weld toe parts.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.243-251
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• 2016

Longitudinally structural cracks are sometimes observed in the pavement on steel plate deck bridges because traffic truck loadings can cause large local deformations of the thin deck plate stiffened by longitudinal and transverse beams. In this study, an improved finite strip method using flat-shell strip, prism, and link elements is presented to investigate local deformations of steel decks with pavements in which flexural and torsional stiffness effects of thin floor beams are rigorously taken into account. A simplified deck model extracted from steel plate-girder bridges is analyzed using the developed FSM and the commercial FE program, ABAQUS and also, their numerical results are compared and discussed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.799-813
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• 2020

Fatigue cracks of rib-to-deck (RD) joints have been frequently observed in the orthotropic steel decks (OSD) using conventional U-ribs (CU). Thickened edge U-rib (TEU) is proposed to enhance the fatigue strength of RD joints, and its effectiveness has been proved through fatigue tests. In-depth full-scale tests are further carried out to investigate both the fatigue strength and fractography of RD joints. Based on the test result, the mean fatigue strength of TEU specimens is 21% and 17% higher than that of CU specimens in terms of nominal and hot spot stress, respectively. Meanwhile, the development of fatigue cracks has been measured using the strain gauges installed along the welded joint. It is found that such the crack remains almost in semi-elliptical shape during the initiation and propagation. For the further application of TEUs, the design curve under the specific survival rate is required for the RD joints using TEUs. Since the fatigue strength of welded joints is highly scattered, the design curves derived by using the limited test data only are not reliable enough to be used as the reference. On this ground, an experiment-numerical hybrid approach is employed. Basing on the fatigue test, a probabilistic assessment model has been established to predict the fatigue strength of RD joints. In the model, the randomness in material properties, initial flaws and local geometries has been taken into consideration. The multiple-site initiation and coalescence of fatigue cracks are also considered to improve the accuracy. Validation of the model has been rigorously conducted using the test data. By extending the validated model, large-scale databases of fatigue life could be generated in a short period. Through the regression analysis on the generated database, design curves of the RD joint have been derived under the 95% survival rate. As the result, FAT 85 and FAT 110 curves with the power index m of 2.89 are recommended in the fatigue evaluation on the RD joint using TEUs in terms of nominal stress and hot spot stress respectively. Meanwhile, FAT 70 and FAT 90 curves with m of 2.92 are suggested in the evaluation on the RD joint using CUs in terms of nominal stress and hot spot stress, respectively.