Design criterion for fatigue strengthening of riveted beams in a 120-year-old railway metallic bridge using pre-stressed CFRP plates

This study presents a design criterion developed for fatigue strengthening of a 120-year-old metallic railway bridge in Switzerland and presents a pre-stressed un-bonded reinforcement (PUR) system developed to apply the strengthening. The PUR system uses carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates; however, unlike conventional pre-stressed CFRP reinforcement methods, preparation of the existing metallic bridge surface is not required. This decreases the time required for on-site strengthening procedures. The principle of the constant life diagram (CLD) and two fatigue failure criteria (Johnson and Goodman) are described. Analytical formulations are developed based on the CLD method to determine the minimum CFRP pre-stress level required to prevent fatigue crack initiation. The PUR system uses an applied pre-stress force to reduce the mean stress level (and stress ratio) to shift an existing fatigue-susceptible metallic detail from the 'at risk' finite life regime to the 'safe' infinite life regime. The applied CLD method is particularly valuable when the stress history of the detail is not known and it is difficult to assess the remaining fatigue life. Moreover, it is shown that the currently adopted approach in many structural codes which emphasizes stress range as the dominant parameter influencing fatigue life are non-conservative for tension-tension stress patterns (i.e., stress ratios of 0 < R < 1). Analyses show that the modified Johnson formula accurately reflects the combined effect of stress range, mean stress level, and material properties, and offers a relatively easy design procedure. Details of a retrofit field application on members of a riveted wrought iron railway bridge are given. A wireless sensor network (WSN) system is used for long-term monitoring of the on-site CFRP stress levels and temperature of the retrofitted details. WSN measurements indicate that increases in ambient temperature result in increased CFRP pre-stress levels. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Load history effects in fibre-reinforced polymer composite materials

Abdolvahid Movahedirad

Today, it is widely accepted that fatigue is one of the most common failure mechanisms in structural components, and pure static failure is rarely observed. Engineering structures are subjected to complex mechanical fatigue loading histories, which cause damage that eventually leads to functional and structural deterioration. One reason for this complexity is that the cyclic loading is accompanied by time-dependent deformations including creep and recovery. Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials are susceptible to time-dependent deformation, due to the viscoelastic nature of their matrix. Therefore, fatigue-creep-recovery interactions can play a role in the overall deformation behavior of FRP composite materials. The limited experimental investigations of FRP composite materials showed considerable effects of time-dependent phenomena on the fatigue behavior. However, no systematic analysis to clearly determine the effect of creep and recovery on developed damage mechanisms of FRP composites has yet been conducted. The aim of this research is to understand the fatigue behavior of glass fiber-reinforced composite (GFRP) materials and establish a reliable methodology to analytically/numerically model the fatigue behavior of FRP composite materials. The fatigue behavior of (±45)2S angle-ply glass/epoxy laminated composite at different stress levels has been investigated in this thesis. It was observed that cyclic-dependent parameters (cyclic creep, fatigue stiffness, and hysteresis loop area) as well as damage development were a function of applied stress levels. In tension-tension continuous fatigue, by decreasing the stress ratio, the damage became more severe, fatigue stiffness exhibited greater changes, the hysteresis loop area became larger and a higher and more uneven self-generated temperature was recorded. The effect of loading interruption on fatigue behavior was studied by subjecting the specimens to tension-tension constant amplitude fatigue loading interrupted at ¿max by creep intervals. At high stress levels, the fatigue life was improved when hold time was short as a result of the fiber realignment caused by the creep strain, while longer hold time caused considerable creep damage and therefore premature fatigue failure of the specimens. The cyclic loading was also interrupted at zero stress level. The stiffness degradation rates and hysteresis loop area decreased during the cyclic loading phase, while specimen recovery occurred after each stress removal. It was observed that specimens loaded under interrupted fatigue exhibited longer fatigue lives than those continuously loaded at high stress levels as a result of partial fatigue stiffness restoration and crack blunting. It was concluded that fatigue design allowables based on continuous fatigue could be conservative. A model based on the theory of viscoelasticity was developed to simulate specimen recovery in viscoelastic materials and predict their cyclic-dependent mechanical properties. The developed model predicted the cyclic-dependent parameters well - the fatigue stiffness, hysteresis loop area, cyclic creep, storage and loss moduli as well as tan(¿).

EPFL2019

Strengthening of metallic members under mixed mode fatigue loading using prestressed CFRP plates

Ardalan Hosseini

The strengthening of existing steel structures against high-cycle fatigue (HCF) loading has become one of the most important topics of interest in structural rehabilitation. Apart from the conventional strengthening techniques that incorporate bulky and heavy steel reinforcements, the application of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites has attracted much interest for the strengthening of fatigue-prone (or fatigue-damaged) steel members. Over the last two decades, considerable research studies have been conducted to further understand the static and/or fatigue behavior of CFRP-strengthened steel members. However, existing knowledge on the issue is more focused on the strengthening of small-scale steel members using nonprestressed CFRP patches subjected to the simple mode I (tensile mode) loading condition. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that a combination of modes I and II (shear mode), hereafter referred to as the mixed mode I/II loading condition, often acts on structural members; such a complex loading is responsible for the failure of fatigue-critical details. Although some limited research studies have been conducted on the mixed mode I/II fatigue behavior of bare mild steel, which is relevant for civil structural applications, the existing literature does not provide any solution for the strengthening of fatigue-cracked members subjected to mixed mode I/II loading condition. Therefore, the main objective of the current PhD work is to propose a strengthening design approach to arrest an existing mixed mode I/II fatigue crack in a structural steel member by using prestressed CFRP reinforcements. To achieve this objective, first extensive analytical and experimental studies are conducted to develop a viable prestressing system by comparing the performance of the prestressed bonded reinforcements (PBRs) with that of a novel prestressed unbonded retrofit (PUR) system. Second, a strengthening design approach is proposed for the mixed mode I/II fatigue crack arrest in existing structural steel members using the developed PUR system. Through the analytical formulation of mode I and II stress intensity factor ranges, a design model is proposed to determine the strengthening solution, including the required prestressing level and/or the cross-sectional area of the reinforcement, which would ensure the complete arrest of an existing mixed mode I/II fatigue crack in a steel member. The proposed model is validated by performing sets of stepwise HCF tests on reference unstrengthened and prestressed CFRP-strengthened precracked steel plates of grade S355J2+N under various mode mixities. From a practical point of view, it deemed necessary to develop a reliable system for the prestressed strengthening of real-scale metallic members. Therefore, an alternative configuration of the PUR system, named the flat prestressed unbonded retrofit (FPUR) system is developed for the strengthening of real-scale metallic I-girders using multiple prestressed CFRP plates. An analytical model is proposed to accurately determine the stress levels in a metallic I-girder strengthened with the developed FPUR system, and sets of real-scale pull-off tests, as well as static and fatigue four-point bending tests are conducted to confirm the excellent performance of the system. The practical application of the FPUR system is demonstrated for the strengthening of a 122-year-old roadway metallic bridge in Australia.

EPFL2019

Analysis of cracked steel members reinforced by pre-stressed composite patch

Andrea Bassetti, Alain Nussbaumer

Pre-stress bonded composite patch is a promising technique to reinforce steel member damaged by fatigue. ifhe effectiveness of this technique was verified by fatigue tests on notched steel plates. Results showed that the application of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) strips and, eventually, the introduction of a compressive stress by pretension of the CFRP strips prior to bonding produced a significant increment of the remaining fatigue life. In this paper, the stress intensity factor in the notched plates is computed by a two-dimensional finite element model in connection with the three-layer technique in order to reduce the computational effort. Due to high stress concentration at the plate crack tip, debond is assumed at the adhesive-plate interface. The goal is to illustrate the influence of some reinforcement parameters such as the composite strip stiffness, the pre-stress level, the adhesive layer thickness and the size of the debonded region on the effectiveness of the composite patch reinforcement.

Wiley-Blackwell2003

Strengthening of metallic members under mixed mode fatigue loading using prestressed CFRP plates

Ardalan Hosseini

EPFL2019

Load history effects in fibre-reinforced polymer composite materials

Abdolvahid Movahedirad

EPFL2019