Influence of Conventional Shot Peening Treatment on the Service Life Improvement of Bridge Steel Piles Subjected to Sea Wave Impact

Abstract

The first goal of the current study is to estimate the fatigue life of the middle steel piles of an integrated bridge installed in water and subject to the impact of sea waves. In the following, the authors have tried to improve the service life of this critical part of the bridge, which is also the main purpose of the study. To this end, conventional shot peening, as one of the most well-known surface treatments, was used. Axial fatigue tests were performed on samples fabricated from IPE-220 steel piles in two states without and with shot peening surface treatment. Next, the modified S-N curve was entered into the finite element software to define the effect of shot peening treatment. Different analysis, including thermal, thermal-structural coupled, and transient dynamic, were performed and various outputs were extracted for the entire structure. In all these analyses, changes in air temperature have been neglected. The most important achievement of this research is the discovery that motionless water cannot cause serious damage to steel piles. Moreover, application of conventional shot peening can increase the fatigue life of steel piles, or in other words the service life of the bridge, subjected to the impact of sea waves by about 22%.