Identification of Revited Steel Bridges’ Fatigue Life

Crack or crack-like discontinuities is an important phenomenon that causes damage in many engineering structures. The most important thing to overcome such formations are to take fatigue into consideration during the design procedure and the manufacturing process that could help avoiding the formation of cracks due to the detail and workmanship. It is also required to be examined periodically throughout the service life of the structure. However, the formation of cracks or crack- like discontinuities are inevitable. Taking into consideration of Their presence in terms of brittle fracture and fatigue is under the responsibility of engineers. By completing the rail line between the years 1856 -1866 Izmir- Aydın, 1865 Izmir Turgutlu-Afyon, 1873 Haydarpasa-Izmit, 1888 Istanbul-Edirne-Kırklareli- Alpullu, Turkey come across with the riveted steel railway bridges. Considering construction years these are the bridges who are over 100 years old and are subjected to constant dynamic loads. As a result, it is a necessity to determine the level of fatigue damage in this type of bridges, not by doing analytical studies but also by testing full-scale riveted bridge members and their connections. It is obvious, he presence of a fatigue laboratory to test and research group has gained experience in this regard is very important. In this study, started riveted steel railway bridges’ member tests in the country and fatigue life prediction will be described in measure experiments done at Haslab full scale fatigue test laboratuvary.