Simulation of Behavior of Fatigue Cracks: A Complete Industrial Process on a Typical Connection in a FPSO

Author(s):  
Michelle Serror ◽  
Nicolas Marchal

To assess FPSO condition, it is necessary to adjust the inspection process and the inspection planning in accordance with the safety target. Crack propagation may be a leading criterion for designing inspection planning and repair planning. In order to realistically anticipate the possible propagation of either cracks not detected during inspection or cracks initiated after this inspection, a joint research project between three French companies (Nexter Systems, CETIM, and Bureau Veritas) has been carried out to obtain improved approach. This approach involves various steps of fatigue crack behavior leading to failure. This paper presents a part of this research dedicated to the development of tools applicable to FPSO structural assessment. This method takes into account the analysis of simultaneous crack propagation. It involves interaction between these cracks. This technique avoids successive re-meshing all along the crack path. Multi-crack initiations are calculated using a multi-axial fatigue damage criterion based on a local approach. A Line Spring Method coupled with a fitted structural stiffness condensation method is used to calculate the stress intensity factors, with a view to determine the crack propagation rate. This method allows monitoring the redistribution of the stresses generated by crack opening. This approach has been then validated on a welded mock-up, which was designed to provide several crack locations in different zones of the structure. An extended instrumentation of this welded structure has allowed tests to check accurately crack initiations and to follow crack propagation. The results are in good agreement with calculation predictions. This approach is now used to assess fatigue crack propagation in a FPSO. An example is provided on a welded connection between bracket and longitudinal stiffener, on the transverse bulkhead where a propagation of four cracks has been followed. This analysis shows an important gain in the fatigue life span prediction versus current fracture mechanics analysis. This gain is mainly due to a better interaction analysis between local cracked area and global structural behavior.

2010 ◽  
Vol 452-453 ◽  
pp. 289-292
Author(s):  
Kenichi Shimizu ◽  
Tashiyuki Torii

Using a fatigue testing method by which fatigue cracks can be initiated and propagated in a film adhered to cover a circular through-hole in a base plate subjected to cyclic loads, annealed copper films of 100m thickness with different crystal grain sizes were fatigued. The fatigue crack propagation in the film with large grains was often decelerated, so the crack propagation rate of the film with the large grain was lower than that of the film with the small grain. When the crack propagation was decelerated, the crack opening displacement obtained from the film with large grain size was smaller than that obtained from the film with small grain size. The relationship between the fatigue crack propagation rate and the stress intensity factor estimated from the crack opening displacement was identical for the cracks in the film with the large grain and the small grain.


Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1656
Author(s):  
Mansur Ahmed ◽  
Md. Saiful Islam ◽  
Shuo Yin ◽  
Richard Coull ◽  
Dariusz Rozumek

This paper investigated the fatigue crack propagation mechanism of CP Ti at various stress amplitudes (175, 200, 227 MPa). One single crack at 175 MPa and three main cracks via sub-crack coalescence at 227 MPa were found to be responsible for fatigue failure. Crack deflection and crack branching that cause roughness-induced crack closure (RICC) appeared at all studied stress amplitudes; hence, RICC at various stages of crack propagation (100, 300 and 500 µm) could be quantitatively calculated. Noticeably, a lower RICC at higher stress amplitudes (227 MPa) for fatigue cracks longer than 100 µm was found than for those at 175 MPa. This caused the variation in crack growth rates in the studied conditions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (20) ◽  
pp. 4254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hashen Jin ◽  
Jiajia Yan ◽  
Weibin Li ◽  
Xinlin Qing

Under cyclic and repetitive loads, fatigue cracks can be further propagated to a crucial level by accumulation, causing detrimental effects to structural integrity and potentially resulting in catastrophic consequences. Therefore, there is a demand to develop a reliable technique to monitor fatigue cracks quantitatively at an early stage. The objective of this paper is to characterize the propagation of fatigue cracks using the damage index (DI) calculated by various acoustic features of ultrasonic guided waves. A hybrid DI scheme for monitoring fatigue crack propagation is proposed using the linear fusion of damage indices (DIs) and differential fusion of DIs. An experiment is conducted on an SMA490BW steel plate-like structure to verify the proposed hybrid DIs scheme. The experimental results show that the hybrid DIs from various acoustic features can be used to quantitatively characterize the propagation of fatigue cracks, respectively. It is found that the fused DIs calculated by the acoustic features in the frequency domain have an improved reliable manner over those of the time domain. It is also clear that the linear and differential amplitude fusion DIs in the frequency domain are more promising to indicate the propagation of fatigue cracks quantitatively than other fused ones.


Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Tsuritani ◽  
Toshihiko Sayama ◽  
Yoshiyuki Okamoto ◽  
Takeshi Takayanagi ◽  
Masato Hoshino ◽  
...  

Recently, due to the increasing heat density of printed circuit boards (PCBs), thermal fatigue damage in the joints has exerted a more significant influence on the reliability of electronic components. Accordingly, the development of a new nondestructive inspection technology is strongly desired by related industries. The authors have applied a synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-tomography system to the nondestructive observation of micro-cracks. However, the reconstruction of CT images is difficult for planar objects such as PCB substrates, due to insufficient X-ray transmission in the direction parallel to the substrates. In order to solve this problem, a synchrotron radiation laminography system was developed to relax size restrictions on the observation samples, and was applied to the three-dimensional nondestructive evaluation of several kinds of solder joints, which were loaded under accelerated thermal cyclic conditions via thermal shock tests. Moreover, the thermal fatigue crack propagation process that occurs under actual PCB energization loading conditions will differ from that under the usual acceleration test conditions. In this work, the possibility of in-situ monitoring of the thermal fatigue crack propagation process using the laminography system was investigated at die-attached joints subjected to cyclic energization loading, which is close to the actual usage conditions of PCBs. The optical system developed for use in the laminography system was constructed to provide a rotation stage with a tilt from the horizontally incident X-ray beam, and to obtain X-ray projection images via a beam monitor. In this manner, the X-ray beam is sufficiently transmitted through the planar specimen in all projections. The observed specimens included several die-attached joints, in which 3 mm square ceramic dies had been mounted on a 40 mm square FR-4 substrate using Sn-3.0wt%Ag-0.5wt%Cu solder. Consequently, the laminography system was successfully applied to the in-situ monitoring of thermal fatigue cracks that appeared in the solder layer under cyclic energization. This was possible because the laminography images obtained in the energization state have a quality that is equivalent to those obtained in a non-energized state, provided that the temperature distribution of the specimen is stable. In addition, the fatigue crack propagation process can be quantitatively evaluated by measuring the crack surface area and calculating the average crack propagation rate. However, in some cases, the appearance of thermal fatigue cracks was not observed in a solder layer that had been loaded by the accelerated thermal cycle test. This result strongly suggests that delamination occurred at the interface, which indicates that the corresponding fracture mode was significantly influenced by the type of thermal loading.


Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Tsuritani ◽  
Toshihiko Sayama ◽  
Yoshiyuki Okamoto ◽  
Takeshi Takayanagi ◽  
Masato Hoshino ◽  
...  

The reliability of solder joints on printed circuit boards (PCBs) is significantly affected by thermal fatigue processes due to downsizing and high density packaging in electronic components. Accordingly, there is a strong desire in related industries for development of a new nondestructive inspection technology to detect fatigue cracks appearing in these joints. The authors have applied the SP-μCT, a synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography system, to the nondestructive observation of such cracks. However, for planar objects such as PCB substrates, reconstruction of CT images is difficult due to insufficient X-ray transmission along the parallel axis of the substrate. In order to solve this problem, a synchrotron radiation X-ray laminography system was developed to overcome the size limits of such specimens. In this work, this system was applied to the three-dimensional, nondestructive observation of thermal fatigue cracks in solder joints, for which X-ray CT inspection has been extremely difficult. The observed specimens included two typical joint structures formed using Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder: (1) a fine pitch ball grid array (FBGA) joint specimen in which an LSI package is connected to a substrate by solder bumps 360 μm in diameter, and (2) a die-attached specimen in which a 3 mm square ceramic chip is mounted on a substrate. The optical system developed for use in X-ray laminography was constructed to provide a rotation axis with a 30° tilt from the right angle to the X-ray beam, and to obtain X-ray projection images via the beam monitor. The same solder joints were observed successively using the laminography system at beamline BL20XU at SPring-8, the largest synchrotron radiation facility in Japan. In the FBGA type specimen, fatigue cracks were clearly observed to appear at the periphery of the joint interface, and to propagate gradually to the inner regions of the solder bumps as thermal cycling proceeded. In contrast, in the die-attached joint specimen, micro-cracks were observed to appear and propagate through the thin solder layer. An important observation was that these micro-cracks become interconnected prior to propagation of the main fatigue crack. The fatigue crack propagation lifetime was also estimated in both specimens by measuring the crack surface area and calculating the average crack propagation rate through the three-dimensional images. Consequently, the sectional images obtained by the laminography system clearly show the process of crack propagation due to thermal cyclic loading.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 2050016
Author(s):  
Dong Yang ◽  
Dan Li ◽  
K. S. C. Kuang

This paper presents a novel fatigue crack monitoring method for steel specimens based on the smoothness priors method (SPM) and Tsallis entropy (TE) of strain measurements. The aim of the study is to detect initiation of a crack in steel specimens and subsequently to monitor its propagation under the fatigue load, based on real-time strain measurements. The nonlinear dynamic response of the structure was exploited since it degrades due to the initiation and subsequent propagation of the crack under the external dynamic excitation. The proposed method was experimentally validated. Here, the SPM is applied to decomposing the structural strain response into a nearly-stationary (NS) component and a low frequency aperiodic trend (LFAT) component. Features associated with crack initiation can be extracted from the NS component. The LFAT component, on the other hand, can be used to identify crack propagation. To tackle the singularity of the structural responses associated with a crack, the TE of the NS component was used in detection and monitoring of the crack in the steel specimen. Two other techniques, namely, acoustic emission (AE) sensor and crack opening displacement (COD) gauge were used for the purpose of calibration and comparison. The results show remarkable resemblance in terms of crack initiation and propagation identification exhibited by all three types of sensors, highlighting the potential of the proposed method for real-time detection and subsequent monitoring of crack propagation in steel structures.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (16) ◽  
pp. 4383
Author(s):  
Shafique Ahmed ◽  
Thomas Schumacher ◽  
Erik T. Thostenson ◽  
Jennifer McConnell

This article describes research that investigated the ability of a carbon nanotube (CNT) sensor to detect and monitor fatigue crack initiation and propagation in metal structures. The sensor consists of a nonwoven carrier fabric with a thin film of CNT that is bonded to the surface of a structure using an epoxy adhesive. The carrier fabric enables the sensor to be easily applied over large areas with complex geometries. Furthermore, the distributed nature of the sensor improves the probability of detecting crack initiation and enables monitoring of crack propagation over time. Piezoresistivity of the sensor enables strains to be monitored in real time and the sensor, which is designed to fragment as fatigue cracks propagate, directly measures crack growth through permanent changes in resistance. The following laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the sensor: (1) continuous crack propagation monitoring, (2) potential false positive evaluation under near-threshold crack propagation conditions, and (3) crack re-initiation detection at a crack-stop hole, which is a commonly used technique to arrest fatigue cracks. Real-time sensor measurements and post-mortem fractography show that a distinguishable resistance change of the sensor occurs due to fatigue crack propagation that can be quantitatively related to crack length. The sensor does not show false positive responses when the crack does not propagate, which is a drawback of many other fatigue sensors. The sensor is also shown to be remarkably sensitive to detecting crack re-initiation.


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