Fatigue Strength Assessment of a Butt-Welded Joint in Ship Structures Based on Time-Domain Strain Approach

摘要

Fatigue strength assessment of a butt-welded joint in ship structures based on a time domain strain approach is performed in this study. The service life load histories applied to the butt-welded joint located on the deck of a bulk carrier are generated, accounting for the still water and wave-induced loads. The rain flow counting method is applied to analyze the load histories, and the long-term distributions of the load range are compared with those based on the conventional spectral fatigue analysis. An approach of converting the load history to a series of closed notch stress-strain hysteresis loops and several open notch stress-strain hysteresis curves is proposed and demonstrated under variable amplitude loading. The approach is based on analytical notch stress-strain estimations and consists of several steps to consider the material memory effect, overcoming some limitations of the existing methods. To determine the fatigue damage for the variable amplitude loading, a design fatigue curve is derived considering the uncertainty in the fatigue lives and load sequence effects. The intrinsic fatigue limit concept is used to filter the small amplitude cycles that do not have a damaging effect. The fatigue strength of the butt-welded joint is analyzed, taking the weld-induced residual stress and misalignment effects into account explicitly. The notch mean stresses or strain amplitudes of the cycles are significantly enhanced because of the presence of a high level of weld-induced tensile residual stress or misalignment, resulting in highly severe fatigue damage.