Prediction of the initial fatigue crack location of automatically welded tubular joints for jacket support structures

摘要

To increase the competitiveness of jacket substructures this paper addresses fatigue tests of automatically welded tubular X-joints focusing on the location of the initial crack. For the X-joint as well as a double-K-joint, the detected location of the initial crack is compared to numerical investigations. Besides, the welding process of the automated manufactured tubular X-joints is presented.