To effectively control the stress state and spatial alignment of arch ribs in the cable hoisting construction of a long-span, concrete-filled, steel tube arch bridge and ensure the safety of the structure, it is necessary to calculate and determine the appropriate cable force. Based on the actual project of a double-span, concrete-filled, steel tubular arch bridge, the construction stage of the left span of the bridge from the beginning of construction to the closure is taken as an example. The linear control method of “quiet do not move” is adopted. Based on the principle that the vertical displacement of the front end of the installed segment caused by the self-weight of the new hoisting segment is equal to the vertical displacement of the front end of the previous segment caused by the tension of the new hoisting segment, the tension cable force is calculated by forward iteration. Finally, based on the theory of the stress-free state method, the ideal linear design of the structure was achieved. The results show that after the closure of the bridge, the error range of the cable tension force is −13.33–15.40% on the left bank and −8.37–11.00% on the right bank. The elevation error of the arch rib is −0.003–0.043 m on the left bank and −0.007–0.032 m on the right bank. The overall stress error of the bridge arch is ±7.0 MPa. The error between the theoretical value and the actual value is within the scope of the specification requirements, which meets the specification requirements. After the closure, the arch shape of the bridge meets the smooth requirements.

In recent years, various welded details with complex local structure, ambiguous fatigue performance have appeared in fully welded steel truss bridges, however, they are not covered in the current design specifications. In order to study the fatigue performance of revised cope-hole details, fatigue performance experiments were designed and carried out on three specimens of revised detail with the same dimensions but subjected to different stress amplitude. Local finite element model of the revised cope-hole detail was established for further stress analysis. The results of finite element analysis were basically consistent with the static test results at majority of measurement points. Based on the existing fatigue test data and fatigue strength of cope-hole details defined in Eurocode and JSSC design code, the fatigue performance of revised cope-hole details was evaluated. The S-N fitting curve with the failure probability of 2.3% was obtained from the fatigue experiment results. The fatigue stress amplitude was 59.5 MPa when fatigue loading cycle was 2 × 10⁶. It can be concluded that the fatigue performance of revised cope-hole detail was better than that of previous welded detail, which indicated that the revised detail had a significant improvement.

Cope-hole details are widely applied to steel bridges. However, the safety of steel bridges is influenced by the fatigue performance of welded details. So, cope-hole details with flange and web subjected to axial loads were selected as the research object. Based on the basic theory of linear elastic fracture mechanics and the Finite Element Method, the stress intensity factors of cope-holes details were calculated. The influences of geometry size and crack size of the detail on the stress intensity factors were then investigated. The Paris model of fatigue crack propagation predicted the crack propagation life of cope-hole details. Besides, the fatigue limit-state equation was also established to analyse the effect of random variables (such as initial crack size, critical crack size, crack propagation parameter) on the fatigue reliability index. Finally, the recommended value of the detection period was present. The results show that the stress intensity factor gradually increases with the increase of the cope-hole radius, the weld size, the flange plate thickness, the crack length and the web thickness. However, it gradually decreases with the increase of the ratio of the long and short axle to the crack. The predicted number of fatigue cyclic loading required by the fatigue crack depth propagating from 0.5 mm to 16 mm under nominal stress amplitude of 63 MPa is 122.22 million times. The fatigue reliability index decreases with the fatigue growth parameter, the crack shape ratio and the mean of initial crack size increasing, which is relatively sensitive. However, the variation coefficient of the initial crack size has little effect on it. The detection period of cope-hole details is the service time corresponding to the fatigue accumulated cyclic loading of 198.3 million times.