This paper deals with the propagation of a crack initiated by fretting-fatigue in
bridge cables. They are submitted to traffic loads and exposed to environmental conditions
(rain, wind, marine environment, de-icing salts …). These loads can lead to two main damage
causes: fretting-fatigue and corrosion. These both phenomena can be coupled and lead to
premature failures of drawn steel wires. In fact, at specific contact points, cracks are often
initiated by fretting-fatigue. Fretting-fatigue is due to the cable bending. Near anchorages, the
bending deformations are the highest and can generate damage (wire cracks). Cracks may
propagate under traffic or wind fatigue load. They are also often submitted to a severe
environment. Indeed, even if cables are initially protected, these protections can deteriorate
and then cables are subject to corrosion. Experimental results show that wire cracks are often
initiated by fretting-fatigue and crack propagation is due to fatigue or fatigue corrosion. In this
study wire crack is initiated by fretting-fatigue first and fatigue tests are set up after with
several environments in order to evaluate their influence on the crack propagation. The
studied corrosive environments are: distilled water, sodium chloride solution and thiocyanate
ammonium solutions with different concentrations. Lifetimes of specimens are compared.
Metallographic and fractographic observations show the influence of the different solutions
on the crack propagation. Indeed, since the microstructure of the steel wires is fully oriented
in the longitudinal direction, corrosion changes the crack propagation modes and favours
mixed mode propagation or longitudinal propagation
