Analysis of the Fatigue Performance of Thick T-Joint Samples Considering Residual Stresses

Residual stress (RS) pattern of thick T-joint welds, which directly affects fatigue life, varies considerably depending on the thickness and number of passes. Nowadays, most approaches to predict fatigue life do not consider RS real value due to the difficulty of estimating them, hence, they tend to be conservatives. However, recent works have demonstrated that considering RS the conservative error in life prediction can be reduced down to around 15%.In the present work, the fatigue performance of multipass T-joints of S275JR plates for a thickness range from 20 to 60mm is evaluated considering RS. It is observed that maximum RS value for thick plates decreases progressively (down to 66% of yield stress). Consequently, fatigue performance of different thickness T-joint samples subjected to the same stress load cycles varies considerably in the HCF regime.Copyright © 2016 by ASME