Extending the Fatigue Life of Bridges Using Stressonic Needle Peening

Author:  Sylvain Forgues, Shockform Incorporated
Source:  The Shot Peener magazine, Vol 21 / Issue 4, Fall 2007
Doc ID:  2007025
Year of Publication:  2007
Abstract:  
CONCLUSION Stressonic needle peening is a great technique to re-establish or extend the life of bridges and other welded structures. The best and most cost-effective approach is to needle peen the welds during the initial fabrication or as a preventative measure before degradation becomes too significant. The StressVoyager is a clean, easy-to-use and very effective tool to increase fatigue life. Testing of welded structure has shown that it provides deep compressive residual stresses and a significant fatigue life improvement. Used to either prolong the useful life of bridges or to safeguard against ever increasing loads, needle peening is a cost effective technique to increase the safety of our aging infrastructures.