BS 7608:1993 - Page 3

Code of practice for fatigue design and assessment of steel structures

Recommendations for fatigue design and assessment of steel structures.

This British Standard provides recommendations for methods for the fatigue design and assessment of parts of steel structures which are subject to repeated fluctuations of stress. It is concerned with wrought structural steel with specified minimum yield strength of up to 700 N/mm2 operating in the sub-creep regime.

This standard is applicable to the following:

a) parent material remote from joints;

b) welded joints (in air or sea water) in such material;

c) bolted or rivetted joints in such material;

d) shear connectors between concrete slabs and steel girders acting compositely in flexure.

Guidance on general fatigue design philosophy is given in Annex A, which also contains a brief description of the method of using this standard.

This standard takes no account of the possible onset of unstable fracture from a fatigue crack.

This standard does not apply to the following:

• orthotropic decks;
• wire ropes;
• bonded connections;
• steel reinforcement in concrete;
• out of plane joints between hot rolled rectangular or square hollow sections;
• pressure vessels;
• castings;
• peening.

This British Standard includes the following cross references:

BS 3643, BS 3643-2:1981, BS 3692:1967, BS 4190:1967, BS 4395,

BS 4395-1:1969, BS 4395-2:1969, BS 4604, BS 4604-1:1970, BS 4604-2:1970,

BS 5135:1984, BS 5400, BS 5400-5:1979, PD 6493:1991, BS 5400,

BS 5400-10:1980, BS 5500:1991, BS 8118, BS 8118-1:1991.