Fatigue strength of corrugated steel bolted lap joints under flexure

Abstract EN

Soil-steel structures have been used successfully in constructing underground conduits of medium and short spans.

In the recent years, manufacturers of these structures in the United States and Canada ventured into using this economic type of construction to replace the old and deteriorated short-span concrete bridges.

Under the conditions of long span and shallow cover conditions, the surrounding soil may not be able to provide the required support for the structure.

As a result, the conduit tends to deform more freely, given rise to a considerable increase in the bending moment under both the construction load and the live loads.

As a result, several cases of distress are observed in these structures.

In this work, the fatigue behavior of lap joints used in constructing the structure is studied.

The effect of bolt arrangement, steel sheet thickness and initial misalignments on the plastic moment capacity and in the moment rotation is investigated.

The study recommended a group of (S-N) curves, derived from the least squares method of analysis, recommended for the design of the lap joints under cyclic lading.