CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL
Welding Technology had a significant impact on industrial developments .Fabrication by welding is an effective method to reduce production and fabrication costs and can be mechanized, computer controlled, and incorporated in assembly lines. Welding fabrication has revolutionized many industries including ship building and automotive production and has resulted in various products such as pressure vessels that could not have achieved their present functions. Welding technology is complex and fabrication by welding encompasses characteristics that should be understood to different levels by the design engineer, the fabricator, and the welder. Failures in engineering structures occur predominately at component connections, even in those structures which have been designed, fabricated and according to Code. Connections refers to those locations in a structure where elements are joined to reconcile changes in geometry and/or accommodate fabrication or service requirements. For example fatigue crack in bridges , ships, offshore structures , pressure vessels and building occurs ,all most without exception ,at the welded or bolted connections and attachments such as cover plate fillet weld terminations, stiffeners, backing bars , and seam and girth weld toes. The reviews by the ASME Section XI Task group on fatigue in operating Plants and others ,as well as examination in-house files spanning nearly 40 years of failure investigations , the vast majority of pressure boundary component fatigue failures to have occurred at the welded connections. In fact non of the failures to have occurred in a base
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metal that did not contain a weld ,weld repair, or significant stress concentration associated with the fatigue crack initiation site. It is reasonable to expect that state of the art design codes would incorporate rules for design codes would incorporate rules or procedures for addressing the failure life of components. However several design codes, including the ASME Boiler and Pressure Code, Section III, Rules for Construction of Nuclear Power Plants components and Section VIII ,Division 2 do not incorporate explicit fatigue life curves for welded components. Rather ,section III and section IIV fatigue rules are currently based on stress versus number of cycles(S-N) fatigue curves developed nearly 30 years ago from smooth, base metal specimen tested at air in room temperature.

Weld Discontinuities and Their Effects

Fabrication by welding may results in various discontinuities and cracks in the deposited weld metal or heat-affected zone of base metal. Codes and specifications define acceptance levels for discontinuities in terms of their type, size, orientation and distribution. Usually crack and crack-like disadvantages are prohibited. Discontinuities are designated as defects only when their size, orientation, and distribution exceed specification limits and their presence affects the integrity of the component and renders it unfit for its intended application.

Weld discontinuities may be divided into three categories that corresponds to different characteristics .These three categories are 1) Crack like discontinuities Cracks Lack of fusion
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Lack of penetration Overlap 2) Volumetric discontinuities Porosity Slag inclusions 3) Geometric discontinuities Undercut Incorrect profile Misalignment The mere existence of discontinuities does not indicate a products unsuitability for a given application. Product suitability for the service is based on the severity of the discontinuity measured in accordance with applicable specification analysis.

Welding is today the most common joining method for metallic structures. Its industrial application is extremely important and many of the large structures designed and erected in the last decades would not have been possible without modern welding technology. Typical examples are steel bridges, ship structures, and large offshore structures for oil exploitation

1.1. The importance of welded joints and their fatigue behaviour

Welding is today the most common joining method for metallic structures. Its industrial application is extremely important and many of the large structures designed and erected in the last decades would not have been possible without modern welding technology. Typical examples are steel bridges, ship structures, and large offshore structures for oil exploitation.

The strength analysis of welded structures does not deviate much from that for other types of structures. Various failure mechanisms have to be avoided through appropriate design, choice of material, and structural dimensions. Design criteria such as yielding, buckling, creep, corrosion, and fatigue must be carefully checked for specific loading conditions and environments. It is, however, a fact that welded joints are particularly vulnerable to fatigue damage when subjected to repetitive loading. Fatigue cracks may initiate and grow in the vicinity of the welds during service life even if the dynamic stresses are modest and well below the yield limit. The problem becomes very pronounced if the structure is optimized by the choice of high strength steel. The very reason for this choice is to allow for higher stresses and reduced dimensions, taking benefits of the high strength material with respect to the yield criterion. However, the fatigue strength of a welded joint is not primarily governed by the strength of the base material of the joining members; the governing parameters are mainly the global and local geometry of the joint. Hence, the yield stress is increased, but the fatigue
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strength does not improve significantly. This makes the fatigue criterion a major issue. The fatigue strength will alone give the requirements for the final dimensions of the structural members such as plates and stiffeners. To overlook this fact may result in fatigue facture and serious consequences 2.2. Fatigue failures Fatigue is defined as damage accumulation due to oscillating stresses and strains in the material. Therefore, fatigue cracks do occur in welded details that are subjected to repetitive loading. In significant structural items they may lead to failures with severe consequences. The Health and Safety Executive, UK, has listed the main causes of structural damage for installation in the North Sea (1974-1992, Ref [1]) as: fatigue 25% vessel impact 24% dropped objects 9% corrosion 6%

As can be seen, fatigue is the main cause of damage, followed by groups that can be designated as accidental damage. Corrosion damage is ranked as ranked as the fourth most frequent cause of damage. Figure 2.1 shows a fatigue failure of a propeller shaft in a shuttle tanker. The fracture occurred in the intermediate part of the shaft. The crack started from the surface of the shaft due to a weld arch strike. The fatigue surface is characterized by its smooth appearance with almost no plastic strain. At several stages during crack propagation, marks which are due to low stress variations are left as traces on the fatigue surface. These so-called beach marks correspond to changes in the fatigue loading; the crack front
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will make a mark during the time of slow growth due to smaller stress cycles. These marks are analogous to the dark winter rings found in the cross section of a tree. As can be seen, the beach marks have a typical semi-elliptical shape indicating the position of the crack front at various stages during the crack propagation. When the fatigue crack has reached the size of about three-quarters of the shaft diameter (D = 360 mm), the final fracture has occurred due to lack of the remaining ligament of the shaft cross section. It is a ductile fracture governed by the maximum occurring shear stress. The 45-degree share planes are easy to recognize for the final fracture. In the example in Figure 2.1, the fatigue failure leads to a severe leakage in the stern bearing tube and the blackout of the main engine. Nobody in the crew was injured. In other cases, fatigue cracks from welded details have lead to severe consequences and loss of life. Figure 2.2 shows the semi-submersible Alexander Kielland that capsized in the North Sea in March 1980. Although the disaster was a consequence of several unfortunate circumstances, the root cause was a fatigue crack in an attachment weld at the surface of a brace member. The brace member is denoted D6 in Figure 2.2 and the crack has started from the fillet weld between a hydrophone support and the brace. After the crack had propagated through the wall thickness of the brace, it continued to grow along the circumference of the tube splitting up the main cross section of the brace. Before the final fracture the crack was over 1 meter long. The accident had 123 fatalities and initiated a large research effort on fatigue in Norway in order to obtain a better understanding of the fatigue damage problem of welded joints. Based on the increased knowledge of the fatigue behaviour, improvements were made regarding both detailed fatigue design and inspection planning for offshore structures. A final failure case is shown in Figure2.3. A large fatigue

crack in the deck area in the mid-ships section of a tanker can be seen. These types of cracks may cause a rupture of the cross section of the hull beam. This may endanger the life of crew members and cause environmental damage to the sea and the shore.

11.6. Extension to full test The final aim of the present study is the development of a method that allows better estimation of the fatigue life of welded structures (vehicles, ships, floating production storage off-loading, wrecking cranes, cars, etc.) when subjected to various loading modes. The complexity of these structures has lead to the adoption of a multi-scale approach, based on the use of finite elements codes associated with various levels of modelling, going from the global cartography of damaged zones to the local calculation with cracks inserted in the models. The aim is to develop an industrial procedure, avoiding successive re-meshing, that is an efficient and easy tool to apply. It is also to be open enough to provide tools to allow the engineer to assess crack initiation and propagation until failure. Coupled with an extension of the line spring method, multi-initiation of fatigue cracks in welds and through crack growth are considered in order to calculate the stress intensity factors for various loading modes and geometries. Furthermore, a set of tools has been developed to predict the crack extension and to take into account the influence of the loading history on fatigue crack growth, such as crack growth retardation effect, as a result of overloads (see Chapter 12). This approach is then applied to an over aluminium welded structure experiment, which has been designed to allow several cracks to initiate and propagate. Local micro-geometries and residual stresses have been measured at weld toes, as needed for local
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stress calculations. Furthermore, a complete instrumentation of this welded structure enabled the precise determination of crack initiations and allowed one to follow crack propagations. The results are in good agreement with calculations and show that it is an industrial necessity to measure the local characteristics of welds and to control the quality for fatigue design. This work was part of a global study performed among a research partnership between three industrial partners and a research laboratory [Ref 35]. 11.6.1. Modeling methodology The failure of an element of a structure may be explained by the presence of a crack which is first initialized and then propagates under complex and random repeated loads. These loads due to the environmentally induced fatigue phenomenon that depend on the joint geometry, the material microstructure, and the nature and the size of the defects. The aim of the proposed methodology is to predict crack initiation and crack growth in industrials structures until failure. For these structures, what is particularly important to be aware of is that under in-service conditions, the load combinations and related stress situations may be very complex. These loadings, which can be static or dynamic, can be decomposed in combination of unitary loadings or modes if the response of the structure is linear elastic; but a crack represents a non-linearity and if we want to take into account the effect of the crack on the stiffness of the global structure, one has to insert them in a finite element model and make them propagate, which means re-meshing. Re-meshing is very time consuming, but can be easily used for industrial purpose only with 2-D models [Ref 30]. For part-through cracks, the problem is much more difficult, because modelling the crack tip requires tri-dimensional refined elements. Furthermore, as the crack propagates in complex geometries, under multiaxial loadings, analytical solutions can not be used. Considering the
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structure response being linear elastic, the use of the line spring method makes it possible to take into account the crack stiffness during growth without re-meshing [Refs 33, 34].

11.6.2. Global calculation scheme The global scheme of the proposed method allows one to study the crack from its initiation until the failure occurs. Various tools using either damage determination or crack growth calculation have been combined to define a global tool called Vericrack.

11.6.1. Modelling methodology The failure of an element of a structure may be explained by the presence of a crack which is first initialized and then propagates under complex and random repeated loads. These loads due to the environmentally induced fatigue phenomenon that depend on the joint geometry, the material microstructure, and the nature and the size of the defects. The aim of the proposed methodology is to predict crack initiation and crack growth in industrials structures until failure. For these structures, what is particularly important to be aware of is that under in-service conditions, the load combinations and related stress situations may be very complex. These loadings, which can be static or dynamic, can be decomposed in combination of unitary loadings or modes if the response of the structure is linear elastic; but a crack represents a non-linearity and if we want to take into account the effect of the crack on the stiffness of the global structure, one has to insert them in a finite element model and make them propagate, which means re-meshing. Re-meshing is very time consuming, but can be easily used for industrial purpose only with 2-D models [Ref 30]. For part-through cracks, the problem is much more difficult, because modelling the crack tip requires tri-dimensional refined elements.
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Furthermore, as the crack propagates in complex geometries, under multiaxial loadings, analytical solutions can not be used. Considering the structure response being linear elastic, the use of the line spring method makes it possible to take into account the crack stiffness during growth without re-meshing [Refs 33, 34]. 11.6.2. Global calculation scheme The global scheme of the proposed method allows one to study the crack from its initiation until the failure occurs. Various tools using either damage determination or crack growth calculation have been combined to define a global tool called Vericrack. The first step is to carefully carry out an accurate stress analysis. It is this stress field that governs the crack behavior in the material. From the knowledge of the stress field, we are able to predict where the most-damage zones located, and which path the crack will take. Then a more precise estimation of the crack initiation duration is made. A crack of the maximum length is inserted in the global mesh and all loadings are applied on the fully-open crack. Structure is then condensed on the crack. From the crack stiffness one can compute the displacements of the crack nodes for a part-through (Figure 11.24b) or through crack (Figure 11.24c) by determining the loads on the crack nodes necessary to close the crack until we obtain the desired crack shape. So during the simulation, after a crack initiates for nodes that have accumulated enough damage (Figure 11.24a), the stress intensity factors (SIF) are calculated for the crack. Moreover, as the stiffness of the structure evolves when the crack grows(Figure 11.24b), stress field is updated and damage is cumulated for the nodes of the crack that have not already initiated. This allows one to take into account multi initiation crack phenomenon for welded structures. All the different steps of the global scheme are introduced below.
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