Fatigue of Monostrand High-Strength Steel Cables under Bending

Students: Agnieszka Kotas, Jan Winkler
Supervisor(s): Gregor Fischer, Christos Georgakis 
Industrial Partners: DYWIDAG (DSI International), ATKINS A/S
Description:

The performance of high strength steel cables is commonly evaluated by following the experimental procedures outlined by fib, PTI and SETRA. For fatigue performance, experiments are required, in which the cable is excited axially and sinusoidally, with and without angular anchorage deviations (representing construction faults). Unfortunately, the proposed test procedures often do not simulate actual conditions, in which the cable is might be subjected to bending, due to wind loading, parametric excitation or other forms of dynamic loading.    

The goal of the current project is to address the aforementioned evaluation deficiency, by testing a series of post-tensioned high-strength steel monostrands under various levels of mid-span sinusoidal lateral displacements - with angular anchorage deviations. Cumalitively, the results from the test series should lead to preliminary S-N (fatigue) curves, for the evaluation of monostrand cable life expectancy something which is currently unavailable in the literature.