Quantification of traffic and temperature effects on the fatigue safety of a reinforced-concrete bridge deck based on monitoring data

For assessment of existing reinforced-concrete bridges, only few rules and recommendations are available, and engineers meanwhile apply design codes for new bridges to evaluate the fatigue safety of existing bridges leading to non-realistic approaches and conclusions. Design codes for new structures are often based on the worst scenarios, and they are not made to assess existing structures with specific loadings and material properties. Direct monitoring provides an important source of information about the actual structural loading and response. This article presents an integral approach to identify fatigue damage of a reinforced-concrete deck as a function of the relevant actions for fatigue using monitoring data. This includes a long-term monitoring system to measure strain and temperature in the most loaded parts, an inverse method using monitoring data to reconstruct traffic actions from the structural response, and a simulation of traffic loading and its effects using a compiler and a finite element model to estimate fatigue damage. The presented approach can be used as a base on how to monitor and analyze recorded data to evaluate the fatigue safety of existing reinforced-concrete slabs in road bridges.