STAY-CABLE FATIGUE BEHAVIOR

Monte Carlo simulation is used to investigate the relationship between the fatigue lives of short-prestressing strand test specimens and strand stay cables. Cable lives are calculated using statistics determined from the results of fatigue tests of prestressing strand specimens. The cable modeling accounts for the effects of cable length and the number of cable strands on the fatigue life. Three different probability distributions are used to characterize the scatter in the fatigue lives of strand test specimens. Comparisons are made between cable lives calculated using each of the distributions. The predicted cable life is found to be sensitive to the distribution that is used. The distributions produce similar conclusions concerning the relationship between cable length, number of strands, and cable-fatigue life with the short test specimen behavior.