Effect of material grade on fatigue strength and residual stresses in high strength steel welds

Abstract: This thesis work is concerned with effect of material grade on fatigue strength of welded joints. Fatigue strength evaluation of welded joints in as welded and post weld treated condition was carried out with effective notch method. Results of peak stress method have also been compared with those of effective notch method for as welded joints. In addition, using the results of effective notch method, the effect of important weld and global geometry factors on notch stress concentration factor has been studied with 2-level design of experiment and a mathematical relation among stress concentration factor and the geometric factors has been proposed. Overall, thickness of the base plate and toe radius is found to be the most important factors determining fatigue strength of the joint. Welding induced residual stresses have also been predicted using 2D and 3D FEM analysis to see their effect on fatigue strength of the joints. Also, transversal residual stresses were measured using X-ray diffraction method to assess the accuracy of predicted results. Based on simulation results, effect of geometric factors on maximum value of transversal residual stress was also investigated.