Abstract
Fatigue tests were carried out for fillet-welded specimens simulating fatigue cracks emanating from fillet weld root and propagating to deck plate of orthotropic steel deck. A newly developed fatigue testing machine for plate bending was used for the specimens of 300mm wide. Fatigue cracks initiated and propagated from root and propagated perpendicular to the applied stress to penetrate the deck plate in semielliptical shape. Failure occurred when crack from other side of deck plate of about 2 mm long joined the crack from the root. The test data was compared with previous test results of similar type. The one mm method was used to predict S-N curves of such details of different configurations. The test data was summarized as S-N diagram to be used for fatigue life predictions of existing orthotropic steel decks.
