Abstract
While a long stable crack propagation phase was observed during experiments of complex welded components, very conservative assessments of the fatigue life were achieved in the past. The difference was explained by the stress gradient occurring over the plate thickness. This paper deals with numerical crack propagation simulations which were performed for different geometrical variants. The variants differ related to global geometry, boundary conditions and weld shape. The analyses aim to investigate how the crack propagation is altered if the structural configuration gets more complex. In conclusion, the stress gradient over the plate thickness, the apparent plate thickness and the notch effect slows down the crack propagation rate if the same stress value being effective for fatigue appears at the weld toe. Thereby, the load-carrying grade of the weld, the weld flank angle and the geometrical configuration have an impact on both the notch effect and the local stress concentration.
Highlights
Complex welded components can have hot-spots showing high local stresses with steep stress gradients
While a long stable crack propagation phase was observed during experiments of complex welded components, very conservative assessments of the fatigue life were achieved in the past
This paper deals with numerical crack propagation simulations which were performed for different geometrical variants
Summary
Complex welded components can have hot-spots showing high local stresses with steep stress gradients. Different variants of this detail were experimentally investigated by means of both large-scale and small-scale fatigue tests over the last decades, see e.g. Fischer and Fricke [5] established three additional reasons: the apparent plate thickness, the load-carrying grade of the weld and bending constraints of the detail. They supposed correction factors to account for these influences in the fatigue assessment. This paper deals with different crack propagation analyses at both simple joints and complex welded structures in order to investigate further effects, besides the stress gradient, which affects the crack propagation, shape and fatigue life.
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