Reliability-based fatigue assessment of steel bridges using LEFM – A sensitivity analysis

The lack of an established safety format prohibits a widespread use of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) for the fatigue assessment of steel bridges. The aim of this study is to facilitate a future development of a deterministic design approach. A probabilistic sensitivity analysis has been performed to study the influence of different modeling options on the resulting time variant reliability. The analyses have been performed by the first order reliability method (FORM) together with a model correction factor. The result shows the importance of modeling the crack shape in an adequate manor and, the importance of the material parameters. Other parameters as the load sequence and the option between a linear and a bi-linear crack growth law are less important. A calculation of the omission sensitivity factors shows that the uncertainties of the material parameters in the crack growth law have the most decisive influence and, thereafter, the uncertainty of the stress intensity factor. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.