A multi-axial fatigue-oriented strategy for fatigue damage monitoring and assessment of tubular joints

Abstract In this paper, a structural health monitoring strategy that performs in-time multi-axial fatigue damage evaluations for welded tubular joints is proposed. First, we developed a stress monitoring program that obtains the reference for the multi-axial fatigue strength assessment, namely, the components of the hot-spot stress and zero point structural stress, from a sensor arrangement strategy representing explicit physical meaning for tubular T-joints. Then, we established a programmable procedure for multi-axial fatigue damage evaluation based on stress monitoring, which is verified through a finite element simulation. Taking practical interests into consideration, we suggest that the proposed strategy is suitable for in-field engineering practice.