Fatigue life prediction for Al–Zn–Mg alloy butt welded joints based on a fatigue damage model accounting for the influence of interior porosity

Abstract

AbstractThis paper proposed a high‐cycle fatigue life prediction method for Al–Zn–Mg alloy welded joints considering the thermal process of welding and the effect of welding pores. First, the welding process was simulated by a numerical thermal–mechanical analysis. The residual stresses were then obtained and applied as the initial stress field of the subsequent fatigue life calculation. Second, a fatigue damage model was constructed by introducing a dimensionless quantity to equivalently describe the effect of interior pores. Further, a corresponding damage mechanics–finite element numerical method was numerically implemented by the ABAQUS platform to calculate the high‐cycle fatigue life for Al–Zn–Mg alloy welded joints. The calculated lives have good consistency with test data, which validates the feasibility and applicability of the proposed model and the calculation method. Finally, the curves of the cyclic stress versus fatigue life of Al–Zn–Mg alloy welded joints with different interior pore sizes were calculated to explore the influence law of the welding pore.