Application of fracture mechanics to welds with crack origin at the weld toe—a review. Part 2: welding residual stresses. Residual and total life assessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Zerbst
Author(s):  
Guido Volterrani ◽  
Carmelo Maggi ◽  
Marco Manetti

Fatigue impacts the life of all components subject to alternating loads, including lube oil injection quills. These occurrences are more frequent if a defect (initial flaw) nucleates in the component due to corrosion, high stress, machining imperfections, etc. The design of components undergoing high fluctuating pressures needs advanced technologies, like autofrettage, and design methods, like FEM or fracture mechanics. This component can be identified as a cylinder with different outside diameters and notches deriving from the geometry variation and threaded connection. The inner diameter is the most stressed area and will require an adequate stress analysis. A sensitivity analysis of the autofrettage pressure can be performed to identify the most appropriate residual stresses on the inner diameter and to obtain a threshold defect larger than the minimum detectable. Fracture mechanics allows the analysis the propagation of an initial defect with materials having different properties and considering different autofrettage pressures. Finite Element Analysis is used to validate the residual stresses predicted by calculation for each autofrettage pressure. An optimized solution of the hypercompressor injection quill can be designed.


Author(s):  
B. L. Josefson ◽  
J. Alm ◽  
J. M. J. McDill

The fatigue life of welded joints can be improved by modifying the weld toe geometry or by inducing beneficial compressive residual stresses in the weld. However, in the second case, the induced compressive residual stresses may relax when the welded joint is subjected to cyclic loading containing high tensile or compressive stress peaks. The stability of induced compressive stresses is investigated for a longitudinal gusset made of a S355 steel. Two methods are considered; either carrying out a high frequency mechanical impact (HFMI) treatment after welding or alternatively using low transformation temperature (LTT) electrodes during welding. The specimen is then subjected to a cyclic loading case with one cycle with a tensile peak (with magnitude reaching the local yield stress level) followed by cycles with constant amplitude. A sequential finite element analysis (FEA) is performed thereby preserving the history of the elasto-plastic behavior. Both the welding process and the HFMI treatment are simulated using simplified approaches, i.e., the welding process is simulated by applying a simplified thermal cycle while the HFMI treatment is simulated by a quasi-static contact analysis. It is shown that using the simplified approaches to modelling both the welding process and HFMI treatment gives results that correlate qualitatively well with the experimental and FEA data available in the literature. Thus, for comparison purposes, simplified models may be sufficient. Both the use of the HFMI treatment and LTT electrodes give approximately the same compressive stress at the weld toe but the extent of the compressive stress zone is deeper for HFMI case. During cyclic loading it is shown that the beneficial effect of both methods will be substantially reduced if the test specimen is subjected to unexpected peak loads. For the chosen load sequence, with the same maximum local stress at the weld toe, the differences in stress curves of the HFMI-treated specimen and that with LTT electrodes remain. While the LTT electrode gives the lowest (compressive) stress right at the well toe, it is shown that the overall effect of the HFMI treatment is more beneficial.


Author(s):  
Frederick W. Brust ◽  
R. E. Kurth ◽  
D. J. Shim ◽  
David Rudland

Risk based treatment of degradation and fracture in nuclear power plants has emerged as an important topic in recent years. One degradation mechanism of concern is stress corrosion cracking. Stress corrosion cracking is strongly driven by the weld residual stresses (WRS) which develop in nozzles and piping from the welding process. The weld residual stresses can have a large uncertainty associated with them. This uncertainty is caused by many sources including material property variations of base and welds metal, weld sequencing, weld repairs, weld process method, and heat inputs. Moreover, often mitigation procedures are used to correct a problem in an existing plant, which also leads to uncertainty in the WRS fields. The WRS fields are often input to probabilistic codes from weld modeling analyses. Thus another source of uncertainty is represented by the accuracy of the predictions compared with a limited set of measurements. Within the framework of a probabilistic degradation and fracture mechanics code these uncertainties must all be accounted for properly. Here we summarize several possibilities for properly accounting for the uncertainty inherent in the WRS fields. Several examples are shown which illustrate ranges where these treatments work well and ranges where improvement is needed. In addition, we propose a new method for consideration. This method consists of including the uncertainty sources within the WRS fields and tabulating them within tables which are then sampled during the probabilistic realization. Several variations of this process are also discussed. Several examples illustrating the procedures are presented.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Accornero ◽  
Giuseppe Lacidogna

The evolutionary analysis of the fracturing process is an effective tool to assess of the structural bearing capacity of masonry arch bridges. Despite their plain basic assumptions, it must be remarked that elastic analysis and plastic or limit analysis can hardly be used to describe the response and predict damage for moderate or service load levels in masonry arch bridges. Therefore, a fracture mechanics-based analytical method with elastic-softening regime for masonry is suitable in order to study the global structural behaviour of arch bridges, highlighting how the arch thrust line is affected by crack formation, and the maximum admissible load evaluated by means of linear elastic fracture mechanics is larger than the load predicted by elasticity theory. Such an increment in terms of bearing capacity of the arch bridge can be defined “fracturing benefit”, and it is analogous to the “plastic benefit” of the plastic limit analysis. The fracturing process, which takes into account the fracture initiation and propagation in the masonry arch bulk, occurs before the set-in of the conditions established by means of the plastic limit analysis. In the present paper, the study of the elastic-fracture-plastic transitions is performed for three monumental masonry arch bridges with different shallowness and slenderness ratios. This application returns an accurate and effective whole service life assessment of masonry arch bridges, and more in general it can be suitable for a great number of historical masonry structures still having strategic or heritage importance in the infrastructure systems.


1972 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Saal

A fracture mechanics model is proposed to describe fatigue crack propagation in notched specimens. This model accounts for residual stresses which are present at the notch root after unloading from maximum compressive load. This is of particular interest for specimens subjected to compressive mean load. According to the model, cracks will stop growing at the boundary of the plastically deformed zone if the specimen is subjected to compressive load only. Validity of the model was verified with notched specimens of mild steel.


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