Abstract: | An algorithm is developed for fatigue damage evolution simulation of long‐span steel bridges based on continuum damage mechanics (CDM) in this study. The progressive fatigue damage from local component damage evolution to entire structural failure is simulated with nonstandard varying block cycle length, which is automatically obtained during computation to speed up fatigue evolution simulation without user intervention. In this paper, progressive fatigue damage evolution of the Stonecutters cable‐stayed bridge due to vehicle loading is simulated by using the proposed algorithm and the bridge model. It shows that the algorithm is effective, and it can improve the computational efficiency of fatigue damage simulation of a large‐scale steel bridge. |