Full-scale fatigue test of trough-to-deck plate joints in steel orthotropic deck

Trough-to-deck plate joints in steel orthotropic deck are very sensitive to fatigue. A full-scale fatigue test of steel orthotropic deck was conducted to study the fatigue performance of trough-to-deck plate joints between two diaphragms. The test panel has three spans of 1.0m+3.5m+1.0m in the longitudinal direction and five troughs with the width of 3.0m in the transverse direction. At the end of the fatigue test, the cycles of the fatigue load reached to six million and no fatigue cracks were found by naked eye at the trough-to-deck plate joints. Based on the failure criteria of the measured stresses with a sudden change, it is confirmed that the fatigue strength of trough-to-deck plate welded joints with deck plate failure is similar to design category 71 in the Eurocode using the measured stresses at a distance of ten millimeters from the weld toe.