Full‐scale fatigue and fracture tests on an entire railway bridge – challenges to provide realistic behavior and to analyse large fatigue cracks

Abstract Within a research project for the development of forecast models for the remaining fatigue life of steel railway bridges, it was possible to execute load tests until structural collapse on a full‐scale girder bridge with a length of L = 21,5 m. It was a great challenge to plan the fatigue and final static tests in order to capture the real fatigue behavior under train service loads. At the decisive constructional details, the crack growth was measured and recalculated using fracture mechanics. After complete through‐thickness cracks at the lower chord of the main girders systematic static tests started to obtain structural collapse. It was necessary to lengthen the crack in the web area several times, because of the unexpected high post critical load capacity of the main girders. Within the paper test planning, test procedure and the most important results are presented, also in comparison with numerical calculations.