scholarly journals Evaluation of Crack Occurrence Probability of T-Shape Welded Structures

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-286
Author(s):  
Y. Hsu ◽  
W.-F. Wu ◽  
H.-T. Kuo

ABSTRACTWelded structures are vulnerable to fracture due to cracks, especially at the welds. To investigate the safety of T-Shape welded structures used in some construction sites, a method is proposed in this paper to evaluate the crack occurrence probabilities of the structures. Three major factors that affect the crack occurrence are taken into consideration. They are residual stress, diffusible hydrogen content and chemical composition of the weld metal. In the analysis, finite element analysis is performed to find the residual stress distribution of the structures. The uncertainties of diffusible hydrogen content and chemical composition are treated as random variables. The critical cooling time is found and utilized for evaluating the crack occurrence probability of the welded structure. Numerical results indicate that T-shape welded joints lead to higher residual stresses and higher crack occurrence probabilities in comparison with the traditional butt joints. Therefore, more attention should be paid to this kind of welded joints when they are used.

Author(s):  
Nur Syahroni ◽  
Stig Berge

Residual stress may have a significant effect on the fatigue strength of welded joints. As a non-fluctuating stress, it has an effect similar to that of the mean stress. Recently the International Association of Ship Classification Societies (IACS) has issued Common Structural Rules (CSR) for respectively tankers (IACS 2006a) and bulk carriers (IACS 2006b). The effect of mean stress in fatigue design is taken into account in both sets of rules. However, the treatment is quite different, in particular with regard to residual stress and shakedown effects. In the present paper a comparative study of fatigue design procedures of the IACS rules is reported, with emphasis on residual stress effects. Testing was carried out with longitudinal attachment welds in the as-welded condition. The initial residual stress was measured by a sectioning method using strain gages. Hot spot stress was determined experimentally by strain gauges and numerically by finite element analysis using different types of elements. Fatigue testing was carried out and SN-curves were plotted according to the relevant stress as specified by the rules. In order to investigate the shake-down effect of residual stress, testing was performed for several pre-load conditions which could be taken to represent maximum load levels in a load history. The aim of the study is to contribute towards better understanding of the effect of residual stress and shakedown on fatigue strength of welded joints.


2014 ◽  
Vol 627 ◽  
pp. 241-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawel Kucharczyk ◽  
Sebastian Münstermann

The microstructure of welded joints differs significantly from that of the base material, what changes their mechanical properties and influences fatigue life. The aim of this work was the investigation of the local deformation field within a butt joint made of 10 mm thick structural steel S355. However, a direct sampling even of the weld metal was impossible due to small dimensions of butt joints. Therefore, the following procedure was utilized in order to manufacture big samples of the microstructure identical to that of the local weldment areas.A geometrical model of the welded structure describing the relevant areas e.g. weld metal, heat-affected zone was established. It was based on the results of the metallographic investigations, hardness mapping and electron-probe-micro-analysis of the local chemical composition. The welding process was numerically simulated using SYSWELD program to estimate the time-temperature-transition (TTT) curves for each identified area. The parameters of the heat input source were calibrated. Afterwards, the material of the defined chemical composition was heat-treated according to the TTT curves. For the validation purpose the heat-treated work pieces were evaluated in terms of microstructure and hardness distribution. Finally, the up-scaled samples of the respective bulk microstructure were manufactured and investigated in monotonic tests.


Author(s):  
Shivdayal Patel ◽  
B. P. Patel ◽  
Suhail Ahmad

Welding is one of the most used joining methods in the ship industry. However, residual stresses are induced in the welded joints due to the rapid heating and cooling leading to inhomogenously distributed dimensional changes and non-uniform plastic and thermal strains. A number of factors, such as welding speed, boundary conditions, weld geometry, weld thickness, welding current/voltage, number of weld passes, pre-/post-heating etc, influence the residual stress distribution. The main aim of this work is to estimate the residual stresses in welded joints through finite element analysis and to investigate the effects of boundary conditions, welding speed and plate thickness on through the thickness/surface distributions of residual stresses. The welding process is simulated using 3D Finite element model in ABAQUS FE software in two steps: 1. Transient thermal analysis and 2. Quasi-static thermo-elasto-plastic analysis. The normal residual stresses along and across the weld in the weld tow region are found to be significant with nonlinear distribution. The residual stresses increase with the increase in the thickness of the plates being welded. The nature of the normal residual stress along the weld is found to be tensile-compressive-tensile and the nature of normal residual stress across the weld is found to be tensile along the thickness direction.


Author(s):  
Isabel Hadley ◽  
Simon Smith

Failure of welded structures due to the presence of flaws is typically driven by a mixture of applied and residual stresses, yet in most cases only the former are known accurately. In as-welded structures, a typical assumption is that the magnitude of welding residual stress is bounded by the room temperature yield strength of the parent material. The UK flaw assessment procedure BS 7910:2013 also assumes that mechanical loading (either as a result of proof testing or during the initial loading of an as-welded structure) will bring about a relaxation in residual stress. Conversely, the UK structural assessment code for nuclear structures, R6, contains a warning on the ‘limited validation’ of the BS 7910 approaches for stress relaxation and suggests that they should be used ‘with caution’. The aim of this study was therefore to review the basis of the BS 7910 clauses on stress relaxation with a view to harmonising the BS 7910 and R6 rules for cases in which the original welding residual stress distribution is not known. The residual stress relaxation clauses of BS 7910:2013 date back to the 1991 edition of PD 6493 and have not changed substantially since then. A considerable programme of work was carried out by TWI at the time to justify and validate the clause, but the full underlying details of the work have not hitherto been available in the public domain, and are described in a separate companion paper. The approach proposed in BS 7910 combines ‘global’ relaxation of residual stress (Qm) under high mechanical load with ‘local’ enhancement of crack tip driving force through the adoption of a simplified primary/secondary stress interaction factor, ρ.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. H. Chang ◽  
D. Du ◽  
B. Sui ◽  
Y. Zhou ◽  
Z. Wang ◽  
...  

Using experimental and finite element analysis methods, the effects of electrode forging force are investigated on fatigue behavior and residual stress of spot welded joints of aluminum alloy 5182. Results show that applying forging force significantly reduces the residual stresses in the heat affected zone and the fatigue cracks no longer initiate from there; instead, all cracks begin from the nugget edge. In addition, the mitigation of residual stress by forging force decreases the driving force for crack propagation and leads to longer fatigue life. It can be concluded that applying forging force appropriately has a positive effect on the fatigue strength of resistance spot welded joints.


2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Fydrych ◽  
Aleksandra Świerczyńska ◽  
Grzegorz Rogalski

Author(s):  
Isabel Hadley ◽  
Simon Smith

Failure of welded structures due to the presence of flaws is typically driven by a mixture of applied and residual stresses, yet in most cases only the former are known accurately. In as-welded structures, a typical assumption is that the magnitude of welding residual stress is bounded by the room temperature yield strength of the parent material. The UK flaw assessment procedure BS 7910:2013 also assumes that mechanical loading (either as a result of proof testing or during the initial loading of an as-welded structure) will bring about a relaxation in residual stress. Conversely, the UK structural assessment code for nuclear structures, R6, contains a warning on the ‘limited validation’ of the BS 7910 approaches for stress relaxation and suggests that they should be used ‘with caution’. The aim of this study was therefore to review the basis of the BS 7910 clauses on stress relaxation with a view to harmonising the BS 7910 and R6 rules for cases in which the original welding residual stress distribution is not known. A companion paper describes the history of the residual stress relaxation clauses of BS 7910. A considerable programme of work was carried out in the late 1980s to justify and validate the clauses, using a range of experimental and numerical work. This included analysis of work carried out by the UK power industry and used in the validation of the R6 procedure. The full underlying details of the work have not hitherto been available in the public domain, although the principles were published in 1988. The approach proposed in BS 7910 combines ‘global’ relaxation of residual stress (Qm) under high mechanical load with ‘local’ enhancement of crack tip driving force through the adoption of a simplified primary/secondary stress interaction factor, ρ. This is different from the method adopted by R6, but appears to be equivalent to allowing negative values of ρ under conditions of high primary stress. A re-analysis of the original TWI work, using the current version of BS 7910, has shown nothing to contradict the approach, which represents a workable engineering solution to the problem of how to analyse residual stress effects in as-welded structures rapidly and reasonably realistically when the as-welded stress distribution is unknown.


Author(s):  
Liangbi Li ◽  
Torgeir Moan ◽  
Bin Zhang

Structural members of FPSO hulls often undergo fairly large static loading before they enter service or variable amplitude cyclic loading when they are in service. The combined effect of both applied stress and high initial residual stress is expected to cause shakedown of the residual stresses. Only a few papers seem to deal with appropriate procedures for fatigue analysis by considering the combined effect of variable amplitude cyclic loading with shakedown of residual stresses. Hence, the fatigue behaviour of welded joints in some experiments could not be explained reasonably well. In this paper, some typical welded connections in ship-shaped structures are investigated with 3-D elastic-plastic finite element analysis. The effect of residual stress relaxation, initial residual stress and the applied load after variable amplitude cyclic loading is revealed, and a formula for predicting the residual stress at hot spot quantitatively is proposed. Based on the formula, an improved fatigue procedure is introduced. The proposed fatigue procedure was validated against the experimental results. Therefore, the modified fatigue procedure could be applied to welded joints under arbitrary cyclic loading while accounting for shakedown of residual stresses.


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