Fracture Surface No. 1 Fatigue initiating from the toe of a transverse non-load-carrying fillet weld it iS. virtually impossible to design a complex welded structure without fillet welds, Oue to their shape, and the presence of small defects (2) at the wold foe (Figure 1) these constitute severe stress raisers, either across the plate where the stress is transverse to the weld, or at the weld end for welds parellel to the direction of stressing. Consequently, the fatigue strengths of many welded structures are dictated by the unavoidable presence of fillet welds ‘The fracture surface is typical of that commonly observed in the case of transverse non-load-carrying fillet welds. Figure 2 shows the SN curve from the series of which this spacimen was part, and the actual test result for the specimen is indicated by an arrow in the diagram, Points to note on the fracture surface (Figure 3) tare that the fatigue failure has initiated at the toes of the welds on the two opposite surfaces of the load. carrying plate and that it has initiated at a number of points along these weld toes (a, b, c,d and p, a). ‘These separately initiated fatigue cracks on each side have been joined up by steps in the fracture surface more or less perpendicular to its plane, Once the Separately initiated cracks on each side had joined up. the fatigue cracks on the two opposite sides of the ‘Stress concentration ‘at weld end Fig 1, Non-load-carrying tet welds. specimen grew in an approximately semi-elliptical fashion until they, in turn, eventually joined up in @ similar fashion by shear lips (Figure 4). The final ductile fracture (X) represents a relatively small pro portion of the overall area of the fracture surface Scanning electron microscopy of the flatter features, of the fracture surface would show the individual fatigue striations associated with each cycle of loading. The shiny regions at each end of the load- carrying section were caused by the two broken halves hammering together immediately after failure (ie, before the testing machine had stopped) ‘Other features to note are the surface ripples of the weld beads, which indicate that each weld was made in two passes, each starting from one of the ends of the non-load-carrying attachment and being deposi ted towards the centre, where the smooth circular ‘stop position of the second weld bead can be seen (F) Both surface ripples and start and stop positions can provide easy initiation sites for fatigue failure if suitably oriented with respect to the stress system Note particularly the undercut at G which would have provided @ particularly good initiation site for fatigue in this specimen, if it had occurred on the other side of the weld bead. Longitudinal weld ‘Transverse weld Stress concentration at weld toe220 lower limit stress =0 180 § * 140 g eee wee . 5 NN a 100 ote 408 TOOT TE too D3 es to? Endurance, cycles Fig. 2. S-WW curve for transverse non-foad-carrying fet welds. Fig. 3 Fatigue tracture initiated at 9 transverse non-tord-carrying fillet weld. w -— ~~ - Te Initiation “i — ore Intermediate ) Advanced developmentTacture Surface No. 2 Fatigue initiating at the edge of a transverse butt weld A perfect butt weld whose surface is flush with the plate surface should have very little stress concen- trating effect, but in practice, because excess metal is deposited, the fatigue strength of transverse butt welds is ctiticelly dependent on the weld profile (3) Strengths at 2 million cycles can vary between 75 and 480 N/mm* and although the profile can be improved by grinding, commercially this is very expensive. The sample in the collection is of a butt weld (Figure 5), deposited using an automatic welding process, in this case submerged-arc welding. An S—N curve for this type of joint is shown in Figure 6, and again the result for the actual specimen is indicated. ‘Automatic welding produces a very uniform weld toe profile and it is of interest to observe on the fracture surface (Figure 5) that fatigue crack initiation has taken place over almost the entire length of one side of the specimen (A~A’). Also, because of the uniform nature of the weld toe, the crack has initiated almost entirely on one plane and such stepping as occurs (B, C) between separately initiated cracks is far less marked than in the case of the fillet weld described above which was made using the manual metal-arc process. The applied stress range in this specimen was less than half the yield stress of the plate material 80 that the fatigue crack could propagate almost entirely through the section before failure occurred with the formation of the very small shear lips (D) Other features of interest on the fracture surface are the opening up of inclusions (E, F) in the rolling plane of the plate material at the extremities of the fatigue crack, just before final fracture. This de lamination was caused by the extensive strain ‘occurring at the crack tip as final failure started, and is, ot confined to fatigue fractures. Fig. 5 Fatigue fracture initiated atthe edge of a transverse butt weld. 300 260: 220 180 stress, N/mm2 140 Upper 1 Stress concentration at weld toe 100 |_ 3x 104 oa 105 lower limit stress =0 , 108 107 Endurance, cycles (9.6 S-N curve for transverse butt welds