Design of a (mini) wide plate specimen for strain-based weld integrity assessment

Abstract

Wide plate tension tests are commonly executed to investigate the integrity of defective weldsunder a uniaxial load. The specimen can be flat or curved, depending on the geometry from which it hasbeen extracted (plate or pipe). Despite its usefulness, the design of the (curved) wide plate test is still notstandardized up-to-date. This paper compares two specimen designs with a different length-to-width ratiothrough finite element analysis, using a design-of-experiments approach to account for different influentialfactors. The results reveal significant differences between the interpretation of tests with net sectioncollapse and gross section collapse, promoted by weld strength overmatch. Further, both investigateddesigns tend to provide similar estimates of failure mode, strain capacity and crack driving force. Hence,the shorter specimen is considered an acceptable alternative to the slightly more representative longerspecimen.