Abstract—Gusset plates are used commonly in truss joints. The simplest form of joints in a truss system consists of bolted or riveted connections. There may be instances when the bolt or rivet holes develop side cracks while drilling the rivet-holes or bolt-holes.Cracks may even develop due to static or fatigue loads during service life of the structure. It becomes imperative to determine the remaining fatigue life of the truss members and gusset plates in order to determine the safe life of the structure. This becomes more critical when the loads are heavy and fluctuating as in industrial structures or bridges. Fluctuating loads lead to fatigue and the structure may fail after a number of load cycles even if the stress values are well below the yield stress. This paper adopts a fracture mechanics based approach to determine the crack propagation characteristics and the crack length versus number of cycles using Paris¡¯ law. FRANC2D has been adopted here for the computational simulation of crack growth. The fatigue life of a crack around bolt holes has been estimated. The approach gives significant information regarding the fatigue life and crack propagation characteristics and may be incorporated in design of truss systems.

Index Terms—Fatigue, Crack propagation, Gusset plates, Paris law, Fracture mechanics

Cite: Bhairav K Thakkar, "Analysis of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Gusset Plates," International Journal of Structural and Civil Engineering Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 87-91, November 2012.