Evaluation of typhoon induced fatigue damage using health monitoring data for the Tsing Ma Bridge

This paper aims to evaluate the effect of typhoons on fatigue damage accumulation in steel decks of long-span suspension bridges. The strain-time histories at critical locations of deck sections of long-span bridges during different typhoons passing the bridge area are investigated by using on-line strain data acquired from the structural health monitoring system installed on the bridge. The fatigue damage models based on Miner's Law and Continuum Damage Mechanics (CDM) are applied to calculate the increment of fatigue damage due to the action of a typhoon. Accumulated fatigue damage during the typhoon is also calculated and compared between Miner's Law and the CDM method. It is found that for the Tsing Ma Bridge case, the stress spectrum generated by a typhoon is significantly different than that generated by normal traffic and its histogram shapes can be described approximately as a Rayleigh distribution. The influence of typhoon loading on accumulative fatigue damage is more significant than that due to normal traffic loading. The increment of fatigue damage generated by hourly stress spectrum for the maximum typhoon loading may be much greater than those for normal traffic loading. It is, therefore, concluded that it is necessary to evaluate typhoon induced fatigue damage for the purpose of accurately evaluating accumulative fatigue damage for long-span bridges located within typhoon prone regions.