Open Access

ARTICLE

Winter–Summer Monitoring and Direct Comparison of Epoxy Pavement on Fatigue-Prone Orthotropic Steel Deck Details in Service on Cable-Stayed Bridges

Tao Yuan¹, Qin Tang², Zhiwen Zhu^2,*, Jin Jiang², Lin Zhang¹, Gangqiao Wang¹

1 School of Rail Transit, Hunan Railway Professional Technology College, Zhuzhou, 412001, China
2 Department of Civil Engineering and Smart Cities, Shantou University, Shantou, 515063, China

* Corresponding Author: Zhiwen Zhu. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure: Monitoring, Safety, and Durability)

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2026, 20(2), 18 https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2025.072805

Received 03 September 2025; Accepted 12 December 2025; Issue published 31 March 2026

Abstract

Using field monitoring data, this study directly compares the stress responses of fatigue-prone orthotropic steel deck (OSD) details with an epoxy asphalt concrete (EAC) overlay during in-service winter and summer seasons. This study was conducted on the E’dong Yangtze River Bridge in China, a cable-stayed bridge featuring a main span of 936 m and an EAC-paved deck pavement. The findings reveal that across all OSD details, stress levels and loading cycles are generally higher in summer than in winter. The most pronounced increase occurs at the rib-to-deck (RD) detail, particularly on the deck plate side. Under wheel loading, the deck plate side of the RD detail experiences both overall and local stress effects, which are more pronounced in summer. This indicates that high summer temperatures significantly reduce the elastic modulus of the epoxy asphalt pavement, decreasing the pavement layer’s contribution to the stiffness of the bridge deck and increasing the risk of fatigue damage to the OSD. In addition, among all OSD details, the RD detail can distinctly capture the effect of individual truck axles within axle groups, with each axle producing a separate and identifiable stress peak. In contrast, the three rib-to-floor weld details and the Cutout detail only reflect the axle group as a whole, indicating lower fatigue loading cycles at these locations.

---

Keywords

---