This paper presents a method to estimate remaining fatigue lives of railway bridge members subjected to time‐dependent corrosion. The method addresses effects of material loss due to general (uniform) corrosion and fatigue strength degradation of material due to corrosive environment. The method mainly consists of stress history, which is obtained by considering the effect of time‐dependent loss of material, full‐range S–N curve, which represents the corrosive environment, and sequential law, which takes the loading sequence effect more precisely in to account than Miner's rule. Initially, nonlinear behaviour of material loss over time (i.e. time‐dependent growth of corrosion wastage) is discussed, and hence, necessary formulae to calculate time‐dependent cross‐sectional properties are comprehensively presented. Then finite element analysis‐based procedure is clearly proposed to predict stress histories of corroded members. A technique is introduced to obtain the full‐range S–N curve for the corroded structural detail. The concept of sequential law is summarized with the algorithm, and then the proposed method is applied to predict the remaining fatigue lives of the corroded members of a railway bridge. The predicted remaining lives were compared with the previous method‐based estimations, and comparisons reveal the range of 16–47% reduction of fatigue lives of critical members when time‐dependent corrosion is taken into account. Also, the results reveal that the corroded members of smaller cross‐sectional area are most vulnerable for fatigue damage. Finally, significance of the proposed method is confirmed.

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a b s t r a c tRail authorities all over the world are paying attention to extend the service lives of railway bridges. The famous Miner's rule employed deterministic or probabilistic fatigue assessment approaches are generally used to predict remaining fatigue life of ageing railway bridges. Under many variable amplitude loading conditions, life predictions have been found to be unreliable since Miner's rule does not properly take account the loading sequence effect. Therefore, this paper presents a comparison of a new probabilistic fatigue assessment approach with deterministic approach consisting of a new damage indicator, which captures the loading sequence effect of variable amplitude loads more precisely than the Miner's rule. The comparison is performed by applying both fatigue assessment approaches to predict the remaining fatigue life of an ageing railway bridge. This comparison intends to conclude the possibility of capturing uncertainty behind loading sequence effect by proposed probabilistic fatigue assessment approach. Initially the paper presents the both approaches. Then the proposed approaches are applied to predict the fatigue lives of an ageing railway bridge. Finally predicted fatigue lives are compared and rationality, significance and validity of the proposed approaches are discussed.

A formula is proposed to predict fatigue strength of corroded members and joints of steel structures. The concept of the formula is first studied from recently identified mechanism of corrosion fatigue. Hence, the corresponding fatigue strength curve (i.e. S‐N curve) of corroded steel is presented. It is further improved to derive linear, bilinear or trilinear S‐N curve for corroded constructional details of steel structures. The parameters of the corroded steel S‐N curve are determined based on the corrosion fatigue testing results of different types of steel specimens in air, fresh water and seawater. Hence, the parameters for the derived S‐N curve of corroded constructional details are predicted based on the above parameters and tabulated for the detail categories given in the Eurocode and DNVGL code. The proposed S‐N curve formula is compared with full‐scale fatigue test results of several constructional details, and the validity of the formula is confirmed.

A framework is presented in this paper to assess the structural integrity of steel bridges for environment-assisted corrosion damage. Forms of corrosion of steel bridges and their effects, possible locations of occurrence, and most appropriate inspection techniques are first studied and the lessons learned from past steel bridge failures are discussed. A review of the corrosion damage of steel bridges, including causes, effects, and control measures, is presented along with guidelines for the recognition and investigation of environment-assisted cracking (EAC) of steel bridges. Experimental approaches are proposed to investigate the EAC of structural steel. The proposed approach is used to investigate the EAC susceptibility of cathodically protected ST52 steel. In addition, the feasibility of the proposed approach is tested. Hence, the conceptual framework is proposed. The framework aims to support the inspection and maintenance practices of steel bridges.