Improving Fatigue Life of Bridges, Pipelines and Offshore Structures
Introduction In structural steel components, cracks usually occur at locations containing high stress concentrations, high residual tensile stresses and initial flaws, or combinations of these factors. These cracks might be present after fabrication or may be initiated during the life of the structure. They grow in a stable manner under the application of cyclic loading until the crack size becomes large enough to cause unstable crack propagation. Once a crack has been detect