Abstract
Fatigue cracks along cutouts of diaphragms or transverse ribs in orthotropic steel deck have been reported. Various alternative cutout details have been proposed. However, most of them result in the poor fabrication performance or insufficient fatigue resistance. This study examined the fatigue resistance of the cutout changing the geometrical shapes and dimensions, and a series of finite element analysis was performed with minute shell and solid elements. The improved cutout details release the stress concentration by approximately 75% compared to the conventional ones. In addition, fatigue tests on the full scale specimens were carried out and the test result demonstrated that proposed cutout details significantly improved the fatigue resistance.
