Fatigue Life Assessment of Orthotropic Steel Deck with UHPC

Pavement
Xu Jiang, Yuan Yuan, Chong Wu* & Chengwei Luo
College of Civil Engineering,Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Correspondence should be addressed to Chong Wu; 69598397@qq.com
ABSTRACT: In the recent years, a number of large span bridges with orthotropic steel decks were construct-
ed in China. With increasing traffic volumes and higher wheel loads, many fatigue cracks developed at the
welds and the edge of cut-out holes. This paper aims at presenting the numerical analysis on the fatigue per-
formance of the orthotrocpic steel deck using ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) overlay as the deck
pavement instead of the conventional asphalt concrete pavement. By using Finite Element Method (FEM)
model, stress distribution at fatigue sensitive locations under the action of wheel loads is characterized and
the obtained stress ranges indicate that the UHPC pavement significantly reduces the magnitude of the stress
peak value. A suggested truck stream model based on the Weigh in motion (WIM) data of four bridges in
China is employed to calculate the stress variation at specific fatigue details. Furthermore, the fatigue cumula-
tive damage at fatigue details under the UHPC and conventional asphalt concrete pavement are studied based
on the Miner’s linear cumulative damage rule and rain flow method. The results indicate that the UHPC
pavement on the orthotropic steel deck can extend the service lives of concern regions over 100 years, but the
fatigue lives will reduce significantly when the elastic modulus of UHPC decreases to 50% of the original
value.
1 INSTRUCTIONS studs were welded on the deck which transfer the
The orthotropic steel deck is widely used in large- shear force from the concrete layer to the underling
span steel bridges for many advantages: compara- steel plate. The reduction of stress distribution con-
tively lightweight, thin structural depth and high firmed the beneficial effect of the UHPRFC layer.
load capacity (Lwin, 2015). However, without ade- Base on the finite-element method, the research of
quate knowledge of fatigue performance, cracks in Walter et al. (Walter et al., 2007) aims to analyze an
the deck gradually developed and deteriorated. Dur- orthotropic deck stiffened with the cement-base
ing the regular examination of the Humen Bridge overlay. They investigated the performance of four
(Figure 1 and 2) in China, there are a lot of cracks overlay materials in term of crack width, and nu-
observed in the orthotropic deck since 2003. And the merous factors are taken into account such as
deterioration in the pavement is as serious as the fa- shrinkage, temperature gradient, and traffic loading.
tigue problems of the orthotropic deck. The pave- However, fatigue performance and service-life pre-
ment in some bridges cannot satisfy the serviceabil- diction is not included in these studies.
ity, so it has to be replaced by the new pavement. In this paper, a new pavement method (UHPC
These problems drew great attentions from re- overlay) is proposed, aiming to reduce the stress
searchers. Shao et al. (Shao et al., 2013) proposed a range in the orthotropic deck. The stress distribution
composite bridge deck system comprised of a 45mm in the orthotropic deck with the new pavement and
reactive powder concrete (RPC) overlay which was the conventional asphalt concrete pavement are
connected to the steel deck by shear studs. The new studied. Subsequently, the fatigue performance with
pavement system proved to be effective in reducing both pavements are compared. The material property
the stress ranges by full-scale model tests. Wang et of the conventional asphalt concrete is viscoelastic,
al. (Wang et al., 2015) investigated the stress distri- and sensitive to temperature variation (Jong and
bution of the orthotropic steel deck and measured Kolstein, 2004). The cement-based material is a bet-
the stress in two cases: one is the test load directly ter option because its elastic modulus keeps steady
acting on the steel deck, and the other is the test load when temperature changes. However, the disad-
acting on the super toughness concrete (STC) deck vantages of the cement-based material are obvious.
system. The stress range of the rib-to-deck connec- It increases dead load and is prone to develop
tion region can be reduced significantly with the su- cracks. The ultra-high performance concrete
per toughness concrete overlay, and the stress range (UHPC) has high tensile strength and does not need
at the weld toe of rib-to-diaphragm is also reduced. to vibrate during casting, so this material is suitable
It should be noted that stress variation of the base to resist the live load.
metal at the cut-out location is not notable. Dieng et 2 BACKGROUND OF THE BRIDGE AND THE
al. (Dieng et al., 2013) employed experimental and NEW PAVEMENT
numerical methods to investigate stress reduction in Humen Bridge is employed in this research as a ref-
the deck with the ultra-high performance fiber rein- erence bridge. It located in the Pearl River Delta of
force concrete (UHPRFC) as the topping layer. The Guangdong Province. Its suspension bridge span ar-
rangement is 302+888+348.5m, and the height-to-
span ratio is 1/10.5. The steel box girder is 35.6m
width and 3.012m depth at the symmetric axis of the
section. The space between the diaphragms is 4m.
Due to the lack of knowledge on the fatigue design
in the early time, the thickness of the steel deck is
12mm, which is quite thin. The dimension of closed
stiffener (trapezoidal stiffener) is 324mm×262mm
×8mm, and the distance between the center of stiff-
eners is 620mm. The welds between the deck and
closed stiffeners are demanded to be full penetration.
FIGURE 1: Configuration of the Humen suspension bridge
FIGURE 2: Cross-sectional view of the steel box girder of the
Humen Bridge (unit:mm)
FIGURE 3: Detail of orthotropic steel deck (unit:mm)
Due to the deteriorated state of the original
pavement 7cm asphalt concrete, it is proposed to be
replaced by a new pavement made of resin asphalt
(RA05) and UHPC, as shown in Figure 4. The resil-
ience modulus of RA05 (listed in Table 1) is usually
3 times higher than the asphalt concrete, which is
tested in the Jiangsu Transportation Institute, China.
The ultra-high performance concrete can be pro-
duced as the same as the common concrete produc-
tion process and UHPC has good flowability and
does not need to be vapor cured. The compressive
stress (Figure 5) and tensile stress of UHPC can
reach 180MPa and 7MPa respectively after 28-day
conventional concrete curing. Other material proper-
ties of the UHPC are listed in Table 2.
TABLE 1: Resilience modulus of RA05 (based on values from
Jiangsu Transportation Institute)
Tempera- Resilience modulus（MPa）
ture Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Sample 4
15℃ 5054 6166 4763 5328
20℃ 4896 6566 5335 5529
RA05
UHPC
bonding layer
steel deck
25mm
stud
45mm
steel bar
FIGURE 4: The recommended pavement method
FIGURE 5: Relationship of compressive stress and strain of
UHPC
TABLE 2: Material properties of UHPC
Elastic Creep 28d
Density Poisson
Modu- Coef- shrink-
(kg/m3) Ratio
lus(GPa) ficient age/106
45-55 2490 0.2 0.8 400-600
3 FEM MODEL
In order to investigate the stress distribution in the
orthotropic deck, a sub-structural FEM model is es-
tablished. The stress analysis is performed by the
FEM software package ANSYS version 12.1. A 24m
long segment of girder in the 1/4 main span is simu-
lated by the shell 63 elements, which are usually
adopted to model the thin elastic plate. Other mem-
bers of the bridge are simplified by beam 188 ele-
ments, and then the shell element model is coupled
with the beam element model at the intersection.
The bearings are simplified as simple supports, and
boundaries at the bottom of towers are fixed. Based
on the hypothesis that there is no slippage between
the deck and pavement, the 7cm thick pavement is
simulated with solid 45 elements by sharing the
common nodes with the shell elements of the deck.
Refer to Tables 1 and 2, it is assumed that the elastic
modulus of UHPC is 45GPa, and the elastic modu-
lus of RA05 and asphalt concrete is respectively
5000MPa and 1800MPa. The orthotropic steel deck
is made of Q345q grade steel with Young’s modulus
of 206GPa. The mesh size of the shell model is
0.2m, while the refined mesh size for the concerned
part (marked by red line in Figure 6) is 0.01m. The
stress variation related to the mesh size will be ne-
glected when the mesh size is under 0.01m, and this
has also been proven by Ji (Ji, 2013).
FIGURE 6: Sub-structural finite element model
4 TRANSVERSE STRESS DISTRIBUTION IN
THE DECK
The wheel load 70kN, according to the Chinese
specification JTG D60-2004 (JTG, 2004), is placed
on the deck in two positions. Both positions are cen-
tered on the top of closed stiffener. The stress distri-
bution will be analyzed in three cases, steel deck
without pavement, steel deck with common asphalt
concrete pavement and steel deck with the recom-
mended pavement (UHPC+RA05), as illustrated in
Figure7 and 8.
FIGURE 7: Transverse stress at the bottom of the deck 1cm
away from the diaphragm
FIGURE 8: Transverse stress at bottom of the deck in the mid-
dle span of diaphragms
It is clear that the pavement have a significant ef-
fect on the stress distribution, especially the peak
values of stress which are reduced dramatically un-
der the UHPC+RA05 pavement. It should be noted
that the stress concentration is severe in the deck at
the welding location between closed stiffener and
diaphragm, because the diaphragm constrains the ro-
tation of closed stiffeners in the longitudinal direc-
tion. Comparing with the stress distribution of the
deck in the middle span of diaphragms, the stress
distribution adjacent to the diaphragm location is
much higher. Furthermore, as shown in Figure 7 and
Figure 8, the locations of stress concentration are
different for the two loading cases. The one is exact-
ly under the wheel loading area, and the other one is
concentrated at the welding location of one stiffener
further, which is due to the different underling sup-
porting stiffness to the steel deck plate.
5 STRESS INFLUENCE LINE
The fatigue cracks tend to develop at the locations of
stress concentration. According to the stress
distribution in the deck, there are six fatigue details
concerned in this research, where fatigue cracks
usually initiate and propagate (Kolstein, 2007 and
Eurocode3, 2005). As shown in Figure 9, the stress
direction where cracks tend to develop. Referring to
the General Code for Design of Highway Bridge and
Culverts (JTG, 2004), the area of the single tyre con-
tacting area is 0.2m×0.3m, and the area of duel
tyres is 0.2m×0.6m (see Figure 10).
The unit axle force is assumed to be 100kN, so
that the wheel load of both single tyre and double
tyreis is 50kN. As shown in Figure 11, the load steps
are totally 80, and each step of 0.2m passes four
spaces of diaphragms (16m). The wheel load
position on the shell element model riding the rib
wall generates larger stress range at the fatigue de-
tails (Xiao et al., 2008). Thus, two stress influence
lines of each fatigue details can be obtained after the
single tyre and double tyre loading passing. Taking
the detail B as an example (Figure 12), in compari-
son with the asphalt concrete pavement (AC pave-
ment), the stress range under the unit axle load is
obviously reduced almost 6 times with the UHPC
+RA05 pavement.
DetailB
DetailA DetailE
DetailC
DetailF
DetailD
FIGURE 9: Crack modes of critical regions
 (WIM) system from 15th August in 2008 to 31st
Move onward January 2009. The traffic volume of Humen Bridge
300 600 is divided into 6 parts according to the traffic stream
fatigue load model. Taking the heavy vehicle lane
(lane No.3) as an example, the amount of six vehi-
200

200
cles in 6 months is schematically depicted in Figure
13. The vehicle with two axles (V-2) occupies the
Single tyre double tyres most part of the traffic volume, however the V-2 ve-
FIGURE 10: Area of tyres contacting the ground (unit: mm) hicle weight are basically below 10t. Except the V-2
80 load steps vehicle, the vehicle with four axles (V-4) is the sec-
0.2m
ond largest amount of the total traffic data.
TABLE 3: Traffic stream fatigue load
Fatigue details Deck Axle Axle
Vehicle Truck
span load
type silhouette
(m) (kN)
Diaphragms 50
V-2 4.5
100
4m 4m 4m 4m
4.5 50
600 V-3 1.3 90
300
90
3.2 50
6 100
V-4
1.3 90
90
3.2 50
620 2 6 100
FIGURE 11: Loading steps on the deck for analyzing stress in- V-5A 1.3 80
fluence lines 1.3 80
80
-10
3.2 60
-20
1.3 90
-30
V-5B 6 90
1.3 90
Stress (MPa)

-40

-50 90
-60 3.2 60
-70
1.3 90
UHPC+RA05 pavement
Common asphalt pavement 6 90
-80 V-6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
1.3 80
Load step 1.3 80
80
FIGURE 12: Stress influence lines of Detail B under the dou-
ble tyre wheel load
175000
V-6
V-5B
150000
6 FATIGUE LOAD V-5A
V-4
Based on traffic data from four bridges in China, a 125000 V-3
V-2
Vehicle amount

traffic stream fatigue load model is recommended 100000

(Wu, 2015). The traffic stream fatigue model con- 75000

sists of sets of idealized standard trucks, which is
surveyed by the typical traffic in China. The axle 50000

load and the axle span are listed in Table 3. There 25000
are six typical types of truck. Although percentages
of each truck may differ from each project, the traf- 0
Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan

fic data can be based on the route where the bridge Month

locates.
There are almost 6 months of available traffic da- FIGURE 13: Statistical data of the heavy vehicle lane based on
ta of Humen Bridge surveyed by a weigh-in motion the traffic stream fatigue load
 The stress influence lines of the details are
usually not long enough, so the vehicle can be
equivalent to the axle load without considering the
axle load sequence. The axle load in the stream fa-
tigue load model can be classified into four types
(Table 4), which are single-axle with two tires (A1-
1), single-axle with four tires (A1-2), double-axle
with eight tires (A2-2) and tri-axle with twelve tires
(A3-2). The stress histories of details can be gener-
ated by the axle load passing the stress influence
lines, and the stress ranges can be counted by the
rain-flow method.
TABLE 4: Axle load in the stream fatigue load model
Items A1-1 A1-2 A2-2 A3-2
Axle type
Axles load (t) 5.0 10.0 9.0+9.0 8.0+8.0+8.0
7 FATIGUE LIFE ASSESSMENT
Although the UHPC+RA05 pavement is designed to
work without cracks, the decreasing of the elastic
modulus due to cracks in the pavement still ought to
be considered. The fatigue behaviour of UHPC is
ambiguous and the fatigue test data are scatter (Lap-
pa, 2007). According to test results of Tohru Makita
et al. (Makita et al., 2015), cracks of UHPC will stop
at about 500,000 cycles when the elastic modulus
has reduced by 30%, and the author considered that
the steel bars remained resisting the constant stress
range until reaching the fatigue failure. Yu et al. (Yu
et al., 2008) conducted the fatigue test of the reac-
tive powder concrete, which indicated the elastic
modulus will decrease to 50% of the original value
until the fatigue damage appeared. For the sake of
the conservative consideration, it assumes that the
elastic modulus of the UHPC pavement reduces to
0.5E with cracks appearing, and E is the original
elastic modulus.
The fatigue life assessment will be conducted in
three pavement cases, which are the common asphalt
concrete, the UHPC+RA05 pavement and the
UHPC+RA05 pavement with appearing cracks lead-
ing to the 50% decreasing of elastic modulus of
UHPC. Based on the Miner’s rule, the threshold
value of the fatigue damage accumulation equals to
1.
n
D i (1)
Ni
Where ni is the number of cycles corresponding to
stress range due to axle loads on the deck. Ni is the
endurance (in cycles) corresponding to stress range
and it can be obtained by the S-N curve which is de-
termined by the fatigue strength of the detail. The
constant amplitude stress range for an endurance N
= 2×106 cycles, and the values of fatigue strength
have to refer to similar details in the Eurocode 3
(Eurocode3, 2005), listed in Table 5.
The damage accumulation for each axle type can
be calculated according to Eq. 1. Therefore, the fa-
tigue damage contributed by each truck in the traffic
stream model is the total amount of damage accumu-
lation of the belonging axle types. Given the condi-
tion that the 6 month statistical data can reflect the
characteristic of traffic volume of the whole year,
the fatigue damage accumulation of one year can be
obtained by multiplying the amount of trucks in Fig-
ure 3 with the damage accumulation per truck. Thus,
fatigue lives are the reciprocal of damage accumula-
tion, as illustrated in Figure 14.
TABLE 5: Fatigue strength of details
Details A B C D E F
Fatigue
56 71 71 25 56 56
strength
Except the Detail C, fatigue lives of other details
with common asphalt concrete pavement are very
short, especially the Detail B located in the deck at
the intersection between the close stiffener and the
diaphragm. The UHPC+RA05 pavement improve
the fatigue lives of details significantly, all the con-
cerned fatigue lives can exceed over 100 years ex-
cept the Detail E which is the cut-out welding root,
since it is not sensitive to the pavement stiffening
method. The fatigue lives decrease dramatically af-
ter the elastic modulus reducing 50% due to cracks
in the UHPC layer.
180
160
140
120
Fatigue life (year)
100
80
60
AC Pavement
UHPC+RA05 pavement
UHPC+RA05 pavement with cracks
40
20
0
Detail A Detail B Detail C Detail D Detail E Detail F
FIGURE 14: Fatigue lives of critical regions
8 DISCUSSIONS
The UHPC+RA05 pavement can reduce the stress
range in most of critical areas, it’s an effective
method to stiffen the orthotropic steel deck. Howev-
er, cracks control in the cement-based material is the
most difficult problem, which deserves more re-
searches in the future. In this section, a parametric
study for the Detail B is carried out. The three influ-
ence factors are investigated: (1) asphalt concrete
pavement thickness, (2) elastic modulus of UHPC,
and (3) thickness of steel deck with the UHPC
pavement. The thickness of the asphalt concrete
pavement varies from 7cm to 22cm, and reduction
factors of elastic modulus of UHPC are selected to
0.7, 0.5, 0.3 and 0.1. The thickness of steel deck var-
ies from 12mm to 28mm. As indicated in the afore-
mentioned results, the Detail B is prone to develop
cracks earlier than other details. The transverse
stress variation of this region is the focus of analy-
sis, and the load position and load weight are in the
same condition as shown in Figure 7.
In Figure 15, the transverse stress reduces from
56MPa to 40MPa when the common asphalt con-
crete pavement increases from 7cm to 22cm. The
dead load is the critical factor in the pavement de-
sign, and it is not an effective and economical solu-
tion to reduce stress range by increasing the thick-
ness of the AC pavement. Although the
UHPC+RA05 pavement can perform well to reduce
the stress rang, the transverse stress increases rapid-
ly when the elastic modulus of UHPC decreases to
less than 50% of the original value. The stress in the
deck is sensitive to the thickness of the steel deck,
and it reduces from 129MPa to 30MPa when the
thickness of the steel deck increases from 12mm to
28mm. The fatigue performance of critical areas is
improved considerably by employing the UHPC
layer or a thick steel deck.
AC pavement thickness (cm)
6 8 10
-60
-55
-50
-45
-40
Stress (MPa)
FIGURE 15: Parametric study on the transverse stress at the
Detail B
9 CONCLUSIONS
A new pavement made of UHPC and RA05 is sug-
gested in this paper. Results show that it is an effec-
tive method to improve the fatigue performance of
the orthotropic steel deck. It is proved that the peak
value of stress distribution in the deck is reduced no-
ticeably by using the UHPC+RA05 pavement, and
then fatigue lives of critical areas are studied by the
Miner linear accumulative method. These detailed
conclusions can be drawn as follows:
1) The pavement plays a key role to disperse the
axle load, so the stress ranges at fatigue sensitive de-
tails can increase significantly due to the failure of
the pavement.
2) Comparing with the transverse stress distribu-
tion of the deck in the middle span of diaphragms,
the stress distribution adjacent to the diaphragm lo-
cation is much higher.
3) The UHPC+RA05 pavement can improve the
fatigue lives of details significantly. Fatigue lives of
all the concerned details can exceed over 100 years
except the Detail E. However, fatigue lives decrease
considerably after the elastic modulus of the
UHPC+RA05 pavement reduces to 50% due to
cracks.
4) It is not an effective solution to reduce the
12 14 16 18 20 22 24
stress range of fatigue sensitive details by increasing
the thickness of the common asphalt concrete pave-
ment. The fatigue performance of critical areas can
be improved considerably by employing the UHPC
layer or a relatively thick steel deck.

-35

-30
COMPETING INTERESTS
-25
The authors declare that they have no competing in-
-20
AC Pavement+12mm steel deck
terests.
-15
UHPC+RA05 pavement+12mm steel deck
-10
1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Reduction factor of elasitc modulus of UHPC The authors would like to thank the National key
(a)
basic research and development plan (Program No.
2013CB036303), the National Natural Science
Steel deck thickness (mm) Foundation of China (Program No. 51408424), the
10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Uni-
-140 Steel deck without pavement versities (2014KJ001) for financial support of this
-120
UHPC+RA05 pavement+12mm steel deck research.
-100
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