Abstract
If fatigue damage or its possibility can be estimated easily and economically, the efficiency of maintenance inspection for steel bridge is considered to be drastically advanced. For this purpose, a system was developed, in which thin stainless steel with a fatigue crack is stuck on a real bridge to measure crack propagation and the cumulative amount of fatigue damage. In this study, high sensitive monitoring sensor is proposed in order to accumulate the crack propagation and shorten the monitoring period, and an evaluation formula for estimating the acceleration is developed. Furthermore, the validity of the formula is examined through stress intensity factor analyses and fatigue crack propagation tests.
