Fatigue phenomenon is one of the main factors influencing the life of steel structures and bridges subjected to cyclic loading. The assessment of fatigue life and, in particular, the prediction of residual service life in the existing buildings are a significant and current engineering problem. A number of studies have been conducted for the stochastic estimation of reliability and the subsequent prediction of the life of various carrying capacity elements and constructions. Numerous numerical methods, mostly based on the finite element method – FEM, have been developed to aid in the understanding of the behavior of the fatigue phenomena. The essential tools for these calculations are provided by fracture mechanics and the reliability theory. Some of approaches used for the fatigue crack prediction are based on stochastic methods.
The paper focuses on the probabilistic analysis of fatigue damage of the supporting structure of the crane runway serving the steel warehouse operation of the Vitkovice Machinery Group, Czech Republic. For the prediction of fatigue damage over time, calibration functions for short edge cracks were derived based on the results of the experiment, and the acceptable size of the fatigue crack in damaged structural component under analysis was determined. The stochastic methodology for the prediction of fatigue crack propagation is based on linear fracture mechanics utilizing the Paris-Erdogan's law and Direct Optimized Probabilistic Calculation (DOProC).