Abstract
Many cases of fatigue damage on “the orthotropic steel deck structure with box girder” have been reported. There is a pressing need to identify the causes and to retrofit these bridges. This damage is caused by the complex behavior of the deck, which is directly subjected to vehicle loads. This paper discusses our investigation of the mechanism of fatigue damage that occurred in an orthotropic deck bridge. The investigation was performed by comparing field measurement results with the analytical results from a fine-meshed FEM model. We explain the characteristics of the stress and deformation behavior which dominate the fatigue damage on this type of bridge.
