High-cycle rotating-bending fatigue performance of S690QL welded joints

Abstract

In recent decades, high-strength steels have become increasingly popular in the construction industry. Materials like S690QL steel are mainly characterised by their enhanced mechanical properties, including high yield and tensile strength. As a result, this leads to improved performance, durability, and safety of steel components, making such materials commonly used in several offshore applications due to their exceptional strength and cost-efficiency. Within the offshore industry, the most critical connections are usually the welded joints, thus rising significant concerns regarding the characterisation of the material in the area close and affected by the welding process. Furthermore, this material is highly prone to the appearance of cold cracks. To address these issues, rotating-bending fatigue tests were successfully conducted on S690QL steel to evaluate and compare the fatigue life within different regions of the investigated welded joints, specifically the weld material, heat-affected zone and base material. Increasing thickness of the weld plates was found to have a negative impact on the fatigue resistance, which aligns with the lower static strength for the thicker case. Also, variations in fatigue strength across the thickness were observed. The heat-affected zone exhibited a heterogeneous microstructure, leading to increased fatigue variability during testing, but the fatigue resistance observed aligns with the findings in the literature for comparable steel grades. Detailed experimental results are presented, particularly regarding this heat-affected zone, where the majority of fatigue failures occur, which provide bases for the development of new normative material-scale SN curves.