Reliability-Based Fracture Toughness Requirements for Canadian Steel Highway Bridges

Please note that this recording is from an earlier date.

Webinar  - 0.075 CEU

Duration: 50 m

Presented by Scott Walbridge and Thomas Ying

The provisions in CSA S6 prevent brittle fracture through a combination of good connection detailing, fabrication quality control, and minimum fracture toughness requirements. Although the near-absence of brittle fracture failures in Canadian bridges built since the implementation of the “fracture control plan” demonstrates the adequacy of current practices, the simplicity of the toughness requirements in Canadian provisions limits an engineer’s flexibility and provides an inconsistent level of reliability.

Compared to its European and American counterparts, the brittle fracture provisions in CSA S6 do not recognize the role played by other factors in fracture risk, such as demand-to-capacity ratio and plate thickness. Canadian brittle fracture provisions also lack any probabilistic basis, in contrast to other failure modes covered in the Canadian design codes. For these reasons, the creation of reliability-based toughness requirements and an accompanying design tool has been an area of continued interest.

Building on a previous CISC-funded research project, this presentation discusses the development of a simple design tool to determine Charpy V-Notch test temperatures and impact energies that provide a consistent level of reliability across a broad range of scenarios. This work aims to improve the economy and safety of steel highway bridges, and provide engineers with more choice during design.

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