Abstract
Finger plate expansion devices are frequently used to account for medium and large expansive or contractive movements and reasonable rotations of two bridge deck slabs. Under high traffic volume, these expansion devices have experienced some premature deterioration affecting the structural integrity and causing safety concerns for vehicles passing over the joint. Therefore, a group of experimental tests, in addition to 3 -D elastic-plastic finite element models (FEMs), were conducted to study the structural behavior and modes of failure of finger plate expansion devices. The finite element model results have a good agreement with experimental measurements. In general, welding zones represented the sites of crack initiation in most cases of finger plate expansion devices. The present numerical results showed also that the site of the highest stress concentration was in the weld between the finger plate and the supporting beam top flange. Furthermore, other sites of stress concentrations were located at the vertical stiffener weld and the finger base curve.