The frequent and precocious
occurrence of fatigue cracks in the slender orthotropic steel deck, with
trapezoidal
cross-section ribs, of the Rio-Niterói bridge has brought into
focus its sensitivity to the random and dynamic characteristics of the traffic
loading and the correlated aspects of contact pressures resulting from the
interaction between vehicles’ pneumatic tyres, flexible asphaltic pavement and
the steel deck. Numerical modelling and experimental strain measurements
performed both in situ and in laboratory on a prototype scale model of
the actual steel deck are used for better understanding the focused problems
and to envisage a new solution to enhance the ulterior fatigue life of this and
other similar steel decks. This is done by transforming the deck into a
sandwich
structure composed by a reinforced concrete slab on top of a layer of
visco-elastic material adhered to the steel plate.