Investigation on the bending fatigue and shear failure in steel bridge deck pavement systems

Bridge deck pavement layers are prone to bending fatigue and shear failure because of the continuous vibration, the vertical instant impact, and horizontal dynamic shear effect from vehicles onto the pavement system. To ensure the durability of pavement systems, a typical pavement system on a steel bridge was studied through numerical simulation and laboratory tests. The maximum tensile stress at the bottom layer and the maximum interlayer shear stress of bridge deck pavement were obtained under different loading conditions in numerical simulations. Then direct shear tests were conducted to study the fatigue characteristics of bridge deck pavement materials and structure. Finally, the fatigue resistance of the asphalt pavement system was investigated under the typical traffic level in the northeast of China. This study is helpful to design steel bridge deck pavement systems with good bending fatigue and shear resistance.