Nondestructive Evaluation of Fatigue Cracks in Steel Bridges Based on Thermoelastic Stress Measurement

AbstractLong-standing steel bridges suffer fatigue cracks, which necessitate immediate inspection, structural integrity evaluation or repair in the life cycle of steel bridges. The authors proposed NDT and NDE techniques employing infrared thermography at certain stage in the life cycle of steel bridges. This paper presents remote measurement of stress field around fatigue cracks in steel bridges for their structural integrity assessments. Further this paper shows experimental results confirming the severity reduction of stress distribution around fatigue cracks after the repair or reinforcement of steel bridges