Dynamic stress analysis for fatigue damage prognosis of long-span bridges

For fatigue damage prognosis of a long-span steel bridge, the dynamic stress analysis of critical structural components of the bridge under the future dynamic vehicle loading is essential. This paper thus presents a framework of dynamic stress analysis for fatigue damage prognosis of long-span steel bridges under the future dynamic vehicle loading. The multi-scale finite element (FE) model of the bridge is first developed using shell/plate elements to simulate the critical structural components (local models) and using beam/truss elements to simulate the rest part of the bridge (global model). With the appropriate coupling of the global and local models, the multi-scale FE model can accurately capture simultaneously not only the global behavior in terms of displacement and acceleration but also the local behavior in terms of stress and strain. A vehicle traffic load model is then developed for forecasting the future vehicle loading based on the recorded weigh-in-motion (WIM) data and using the agent-based traffic flow microsimulation. The forecasted future vehicle loading is finally applied on the multi-scale model of a real long-span cable-stayed bridge for dynamic stress analysis and fatigue damage prognosis. The obtained results show that the proposed framework is effective and accurate for dynamic stress analysis and fatigue damage prognosis.