Fatigue life prediction of welded cruciform joints using strain energy density factor approach

The influences of two welding processes, namely, shielded metal are welding (SMAW) and flux cored are welding (FCAW), on fatigue life of cruciform joi nts containing lack of penetration (LOP) defects have been analyzed by usin g the strain energy density factor (SEDF) approach. Load carrying cruciform joints were fabricated from ASTM 517 'F' grade steel. Fatigue crack growth experiments were carried out in a mechanical resonance vertical pulsator ( SCHENCK 200 kN capacity) with a frequency of 30 Hz under constant amplitude loading (R = 0). It was found that the fatigue lives of the cruciform join ts fabricated by SMAW process were relatively higher than the FCAW counterp art. Moreover, fracture mechanics equations have been developed to predict the fatigue life of the cruciform joints fabricated by the above-mentioned two processes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.