Added value of regular in-service visual inspection to the fatigue reliability of structural details in steel bridges

In order to design structural details of bridges for fatigue, the current version of the Eurocode for steel structures recommends partial factors for fatigue resistance based on the consequences of failure and on the maintenance method. The safe-life method is used for details where local formation of cracks could rapidly lead to failure or for...

Partial factors for fatigue loads in the Eurocode system for road bridge design

In the Eurocode system, for fatigue design of bridges, the recommended partial factor for fatigue traffic loads is set to 1. In this paper, the adequacy of this approach is investigated by performing a reliability analysis on two types of welded joint in a main girder of a steel motorway bridge. For this purpose, a weigh in motion measurement...