Fatigue performance of stringer-to-floor-beam connections in riveted railway bridges

Paper in proceeding, 2004

Stringer-to-floor-beam connections in riveted railway bridges have in many cases shown to be critical details with respect to fatigue. These connections, while generally designed with respect to shear forces alone, are often subjected to repeated out-of-plane distortion as a re-sult of their rotational stiffness. Static and fatigue tests involving three full-scale bridge parts have been conducted in order to study the behavior and the fatigue performance of riveted double-angle connections. The bridge parts were taken from an old riveted railway bridge built in 1896 and demolished in 1993. Each test specimen consisted of three floor beams and four stringers connected to each other with riv-eted double angles. Fig. 1 shows the set-up of the test specimens and loading arrangement, to-gether with a detail of the double-angle connections. Finite element analysis of the tested specimens was also performed in order to more closely study the load-deformation characteris-tics of these connections.