The Key Technique Development of Fatigue Researches on Steel Bridges and Its New Achievements in China

This paper first describes the historical development of steel bridge in China, and then mainly introduces the technique development of fatigue for research on steel bridges in China. There are two main aspects of fatigue research for steel bridges, one is the research on existing steel bridges to evaluate the remaining life of steel bridges, in order to decide whether to reinforce the old bridge or replace the old bridge with a new one. The other aspect is the researches on newly built steel bridges to determine suitable structural details for bridges, such as anchorage structure unit fatigue experiments, orthotropic steel deck fatigue experiments, bi-axle structural detail fatigue experiments, etc. Furthermore, the future of steel bridge fatigue research in China is proposed.