Effectiveness of fatigue retrofits to transverse beam and sway bracing connections in steel bridges

A great number of fatigue cracks have been found in the welded joints at the top end of web gap plates in the transverse beam connection, at the top end of vertical stiffeners in the sway bracing connection, and at the web penetrations with the transverse beam bottom flange.
The present paper is a report on the verification of the effectiveness of 3 new types of retrofit methods proposed against those fatigue crackings. Stress measurements were carried out before and after retrofit works in a 45 years old bridge located in one of the heaviest traffic routes in Japan. As a result, fatigue life was considerably improved after the retrofit works, except for the case of vertical stiffener upper end retrofitted by the jack-up method. Fatigue life was improved to more than a several times by the TRS method for the vertical stiffener upper end and web gap, and to more than tens of times at the girder web slot area after retrofitting.