Understanding and Reevaluating Fracture Critical: Research and Strategies - Part 2 [B3]

The current criteria that bridge designers and owners use for determining the fracture critical status of a steel bridge design are fundamentally based on assessing redundancy of the structure and its resistance to failure. However, there are no clear, concise, generally accepted, science-based methods of determining structural redundancy in a bridge structure and no consensus agreement of failure.

Part 2 of this series will present new research which will hopefully lead to fewer bridges being deemed fracture critical and thereby reducing the in-service inspection demand on bridge owners.

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