ht. J. Pres. Ves.

& Piping 61 (1996) 229-242

0 1996 Elsevier Science Limited
Printed in Northern Ireland. All rights reserved
ELSEVIER 0308-0161(94)00020-8 0308-0161/96/$15.00

Experimental investigation of fatigue

behaviour for welded .joint with mechanical
heterogeneity
Guangxu Cheng, Z. B. Kuang, Z. W. Lou & Hua Li
Department of Chemical Engineering and Machinery, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Wan Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
Shaanxi Province, 710049, P. R. China

(Received 20 December 1994;accepted 22 January 1995)

Because of material and mechanical heterogeneity in welded joints, ex-

perimental studiesof low-cycle fatigue (LCF) life and fatigue crack initiation
behaviour were performed on weld metal, heat-affectedzone (HAZ) and base
metal of 16MnR pressurevesselsteel. A fatigue damagetest was carried out
by introducing a new damagevariable. The fatigue damageevolution laws in
each zone of a welded joint were obtained. A circular-notched compact
tension specimenwasdesignedand the whole processof fatigue damage,crack
initiation and crack growth in each zone was investigated. The effect of
mechanical heterogeneity in welded joints on the fatigue damagebehaviour
and fatigue crack initiation life was also investigated. The experimental and
theoretical resultsindicate that the fatigue behaviour is markedly different in
three zones of welded joints: there is a trend toward reduction in the fatigue
life of HAZ ascompared with the basemetal. The weld metal doesnot have
the samefatigue behaviour as confirmed by LCF life and crack growth rate.
This study leadsto the conclusionthat fairly accurate estimatesof fatigue life
for weldedjoints shouldinclude the whole processof fatigue damageevolution
and fatigue crack initiation as well as crack growth. Furthermore, a local
experimental method should be carried out for weld metal, HAZ and base
metal, respectively. Finally, the local fatigue failure criterion based on the
weakestchain model has been presented.

1 INTRODUCTION steel structures are heterogeneous both in

The overall safety of steel structures is evaluated
in the welded joint as well as in the base plate,
since many fatigue loaded structures are fabri-
cated by welding. According to the statistics of
previous failure accidents of pressure vessels,
about 26% of total failures were caused by
fatigue damage or fatigue fracture and most of
the failures took place at the welded joints for
welded structures.’ Therefore, the fatigue life
evaluation of welded joints is essential and
important for engineering structures.
In the view of macroscopical studies each weld
pass has a heat-affected zone. Therefore, the
welded joint is a mechanical heterogeneous body
composed of base metal (BM), weld metal (WM)
and heat-affected zone (HAZ). Weldments in
229
microstructure and mechanical properties. It is
noted that the cyclic stress/strain behaviour,
fatigue damage mechanism, fatigue crack initia-
tion and growth rate are different in these three
zones for welded joints. In order to assure the
safety of welding structures, many researchers
pay attention to investigating the fatigue damage
and fatigue fracture of welded joints with
mechanical heterogeneity. In recent years, the
researches were focused on the fatigue strength
of the welded joint and fatigue crack growth from
welded defects.‘,” A method for fatigue life
prediction has been proposed by Lawrence using
strain-controlled fatigue concepts.3 However the
discussion of LCF (low cycle fatigue) life so far
has assumed that the weld metal behaves as if it
was homogeneous. The fatigue tests usually were
230 Guangxu
carried out on welded‘joints, therefore, the total
loading displacement of a welded joint specimen
included base metal, weld metal and HAZ.
At present, fatigue behaviour in the crack
propagation regime is more clearly understood
and the methodology for prediction of crack
growth life is well known. However, because of
the difficulty of measurement and calculation
about crack initiation, the crack initiation life
under the same conditions has not been
understood and there has been no adequate
information on the effects of welding heteroge-
neity on the crack initiation life. This led some
researchers to neglect the initiation portion of
fatigue life in assessing the fatigue performance
of welded structures. This neglect gives a
conservatism to the assessment procedure but the
fatigue life of a welded structure may be
underestimated. In addition, there are some
structures where the design to prevent crack
initiation is important because of surveillance or
maintenance considerations. Therefore, more
recent studies and experiments have concentr-
ated on the determination of crack initiation life
at each zone in welded joints and the effect of
mechanical heterogeneity on fatigue initiation
life. For welding structures, besides the state of
stress and strain, many factors such as mic-
rostructure, mechanical heterogeneity and re-
sidual stress may influence the crack initiation
seriously. Furthermore, the crack initiation life is
different in each zone. Therefore it is very
important to investigate fatigue crack initiation
and influencing factors of initiation life in each
zone of welded joints for predicting the precise
fatigue life in engineering structure.
Generally, in such studies the welded defects
have been simplified to macro-cracks. The fatigue
crack initiation and growth from a pre-cracked
specimen were studied by fracture mechanics
theory. However, because of the characteristics
of welding procedure, the welding zones easily
produce metallurgical discontinuity such as:
microcracks, porosity, non-metallic inclusions,
microstructure alteration of heat-affected zone,
etc. In fact, a welding zone may look like the
initial damage zone of microscopical defects. This
initial damage leads to deterioration of the
mechanical properties of the welded joint under
the action of cycle loading. The final fracture of
structures are probably the evolution and
development process of the initial damage and
damage process before macro-crack initiation
Cheng et al.
occupies the most fatigue life of the structures.
Therefore, it is also very important to investigate
the damage process and physical mechanism of
damage evolution before macro-cracks form in
welded joints.
The purpose of the present work is to focus on
the comparative study of LCF behaviour of base
metals and its weld metals and HAZ by
continuum damage mechanics (CDM), to analyze
the fatigue damage evolution of welded joints
through a new damage variable presented by the
authors. It is also our purpose to study the whole
process of fatigue damage, fatigue crack initiation
and crack growth, to study the effect of
mechanical heterogeneity on fatigue behaviour
and fatigue life. The major emphasis is placed on
estimating the LCF damage process and fatigue
initiation life of HAZ.
2 MATERIALS AND EXPERIMENTAL
PROCEDURES
2.1 Materials and specimens
The base material chosen for the investigations
was a pressure vessel steel called 16MnR
(designated in Chinese-GB). The thickness of the
steel plate was 22 mm. The joint was welded by
auto-submerged arc welding (SAW) procedure,
with HlOMn2 welding wire of 4.0mm in
diameter. The chemical compositions and mech-
anical properties of the low-alloy steels are
presented in Tables 1 and 2 respectively. The
welding condition is listed in Table 3. The welded
joint consists of three zones macroscopically, i.e.
weld metal zone, HAZ and base metal.
In order to investigate the fatigue damage
evolution and fatigue crack initiation behaviour,
two types of specimens were designed. These
specimens were taken from multipass welded
joints at half depth of welded plate, as shown in
Fig. 1.
One type of specimen is the so-called
hourglass-type specimen, which was used to study
LCF behaviour and fatigue damage. The test part
of the specimen is a cylindrical bar of 7-Omm in
diameter and 30mm in length, the minimum
cross-section (6.0 mm in diameter) is placed on
the centre of weld metal (called WM specimen),
heat-affected zone (called HAZ specimen) and
base metal (called BM specimen) respectively, as
shown in Fig. 2.
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical heterogeneity 231

Table 1: Chemical compositions of 16MnR steel and weld metal

(Wel)

Material C Mn Si P S

16MnR 0.18 1.54 0.35 0.019 0.023

HlOMn2 0.11- 0.13 1.69- 1.70 0.43 5 0.53 0.017 0.022

2.2 The mechanical heterogeneity of the welded
joint
The microstructure of base metal is ferrite and
pearlite, but the microstructure of deposited weld
metal and HAZ is markedly different from that
of the base metal. Weld metal consists of
columnar pearlite and ferrite. In the HAZ the
welding process produces local microstructural
changes and the microstructure is tempered
martensitic. Obviously, the difference of mic-
rostructure between the three zones must lead to
mechanical heterogeneity. In order to obtain the
distribution of mechanical properties for the
welded joints, the microspecimens were cut out
from the welded plate by molybdenum wire, as
shown in Fig. 3. The monotonic tension tests of
microspecimens were carried out on a microtest-
ing machine. Figure 4 gives the distribution of
strength and ductility of the welded joint. It is
obvious that the weld metal and HAZ do not
have the same mechanical properties anywhere
as confirmed by strength and ductility.
2.3 Low-cycle fatigue tests
The LCF tests were performed on a closed-loop,
servo-hydraulic INSTRON-1341 test machine by
means of controlled total axial strain amplitude.
The cyclic loading was conducted at room
temperature with the applied signal being a fully
reversed triangular wave at various strain
amplitude. The strain was measured by using a
strain gauge clipped on in the axial direction. The
LCF life N, was defined to be the number of
cycles corresponding to a 20% reduction of
tensile stress from that corresponding to half life.
2.4 The fatigue damage tests
The fatigue damage tests were divided into two
groups. In one group, the specimens of original
material (no cyclic loading before tensile) were
directly subjected to monotonic tensile load until
they fractured to obtain the reduction of section
area I,!Jand fracture strain .sf. In another group,
the specimens were firstly subjected to cyclic
loading to a certain number of cycles so that a
degree of damage had been made in these
specimens; the damaged specimens were then
tensioned to fracture by monotonic loading to
obtain the remaining reduction of section area $
and remaining fracture strain cRP
2.5 Fatigue crack initiation tests
The purpose of designing burnt-notched, com-
pact tension specimens (notched-CT specimens)
was to investigate the crack initiation, early
growth behaviour and crack growth. The
geometry of the specimens and experimental
procedure were designed with reference to the
requirements of ASTM E647. The details of the
specimen geometry are shown in Fig. 5. In order
to obtain the fatigue crack initiation behaviour in
each zone of the welded joint, the notches were
located at different welding zones. According to
the location of the notches, the specimens were
also divided into three types, i.e. weld metal
specimen, HAZ specimen and base metal
specimen. For WM specimen, the notch was put
at the centre of weld metal along the welding
direction. For the HAZ specimen, the notch root
was located on the coarse-grain zone, that is
O-5 mm apart from the fusion line. For BM

Table 2: Mechanical properties of 16MnR steel and weld metal

Material Yield strength Ultimate strength Elongation Reduction of area

us WW fib WW 6 (%) IL (%I
Base metal 385.0 588.0 28.3 56.4
Weld metal 459.7 624.0 19.3 55.6
232 Guangxu Cheng et al.

Table 3: Welding conditions (interpass temperature Max. 1OVC)

Multi-pass Welding current Arc voltage Speed

(A) 09 (cm/min)

First welding layer 620-630 30-35 38-44

Second welding layer 630-640 35-40 38-44
Third welding layer 630-640 35-40 38-44

specimen, the notch was put at the homogeneous metal cyclically softens at low strain amplitude; at
base metal. These specimens ensured that the higher strain amplitude, it initially softened and
fatigue crack initiation occurred in the weld subsequently hardened as the cyclic load
metal, HAZ and base metal respectively. Fatigue proceeded. Thus the cyclic deformation resis-
tests were conducted at a constant load with tance was markedly different for the three zones
frequency of 10Hz (triangular waveform). The in the welded joint.
maximum load P,,,,, = 15 KN and stress ratio (R)
was 0.1. A KRAK-GAGE potential drop system 3.2 Cyclic stress-strain curves nd plastic strain
shown in Fig. 6 was used to detect the crack energy
initiation and measure the crack length. A
KRAK-GAUGE is a thin foil strain gauge The cyclic stress/strain curves were drawn up by
attached on one side of the specimen surface at connecting the positive (tensile) peaks of the
the notch root. It would crack in sympathy with stable hysteresis loops for various strain ranges.
the crack of the specimen. If the origin of coordinate axes is transformed to
the tip of the compressive cycles, the stress/strain
curve is similar to hysteresis loops for Masing
3 LOW-CYCLE FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR materials, a relation of hysteresis loop or cyclic
OF WELDED JOINT WITH MECHANICAL stress/strain curve is,
HETEROGENEITY
(1)
3.1 Cyclic response of stress during the life
where: A&/2 is strain amplitude; Au/2 is stress
Many experimental results indicate that most amplitude; II’ is cyclic strain hardening exponent;
materials show a certain degree of cyclic K’ is the cyclic strength coefficient.
softening and hardening during the cyclic loading
test. The cyclic hardening and softening be-
haviour is represented by plotting the peak
tensile stress amplitude versus number of cycles.
In our experiment, the variation of stress
amplitude with cycles N is plotted in Fig. 7. They
show that weld metal exhibits cyclic softening
during initial cycles, then the material reaches the
stage of saturation stress. HAZ softens slightly
under cyclic loading. It was noted that the base
Weld metal
Base metal

Fusion line

Fig. 1. Fatigue test specimenswere machined out from Fig. 2. The geometry of specimensfor fatigue damagetest:
welded plate. (a) basemetal: (b) weld metal; (c) heat-affected zone.
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical heterogeneity 233

Weld metal , Soecimen Here, n” and K” are cyclic hardening exponent

and cyclic strength coefficient of the basic
hysteresis loop respectively, in which the origin
of coordinate axes is chosen on the tip of the
negative cycle; Sa is the deviation between lower
tip stresses and origin stress or the deviation
between yield stress of basic loop and apparent
loop. Since the fatigue damage process is
generally caused by the cyclic plastic strain, the
plastic strain energy is often assumed as a failure
parameter. The plastic strain energy per cycle,
AW,, is the area of the hysteresis loop. For
Masing material, the hysteresis loop is described
by eqn. (l), and the strain energy may be
determined by means of expression,
1-n’
AW, = - AUAE,
l+n’

Here, Aa is stress amplitude, AE~ is plastic strain

amplitude. A relationship is proposed which can
Fig. 3. The geometry of the microspecimen.
be used to determine the plastic strain energy per
cycle for a non-Masing material.’

1 -n” 2n”
For non-Masing materials, eqn (1) in this formula AW, = - AcAE, + - &he, (4)
is unsuitable to be used to describe the cyclic 1 +n” 1 +n”
hysteresis loop curves; the hysteresis loop may be
The experimental results show that the 16MnR
expressed as4
steel appears markedly to give non-Masing type
behaviour, but the weld metal follows approxim-
(2) ately the Masing type description and HAZ
accords with the Masing behaviour basically, as
shown in Fig. 8.
Therefore, the plastic strain energy of weld
metal and HAZ should be calculated by eqn. (3),
but the plastic strain energy of the base metal
should be calculated by eqn. (4). For low-cycle
fatigue failure, a relationship of AW, and fatigue
life Nf was fitted by using,
AW, = A(2NJ” (5)

where, the coefficients of A and (I! are determined

by fatigue test. In this test, the hysteresis loop at
D the half-life is taken to be representive and is
2 0
used to calculate the plastic strain energy. In the
E strain-controlled fatigue test, the plastic strain
xb 0 iz
!-
*
energy per cycle does not vary appreciably with
0
cycles, and W, varies evidently only in initial
cycles and in a few final cycles in which
I I I I I
-3 0 3 6 9
0 macro-cracks are formed. Therefore, the total
distance x (mm) plastic strain energy of form
Fig. 4. The distribution of strength and ductility in the
welded joint. W, = AW, . Nf = B(2N,)@ (6)
234 Guangxu Cheng et al.

I
1 2-09

+ Wely metal

Bt +
+
w
I +
(BM) ww (=w cw
Fig. 5. Geometry of notched-CT specimen.

was fitted by using the least-squares errors versus reversed cycles to failure 2N,. The results
technique and the relationships of W, vs. Nf were: as double logarithmic plots of fatigue life curves
for base metal: W, = 924-385(2Nf)o,2739 for each zone of welded joint tested at different
P-4
completely reversed strain ranges are shown in
for weld metal: W, = 667-936(2Nf)o’2”94 m Fig. 9, in which good linear relationships of
for HAZ: W, = 793.261(2N,)“‘2462 (74 plastic strain amplitude versus fatigue life are
It is noted that the experimental data follow found.
closely the relations in eqns (7). Laws relating plastic strain range to fatigue life
have been suggested by several investigators.
3.3 Low-cycle fatigue life curves of welded Manson-Coffin suggested that the relationship
joints between plastic strain amplitude and fatigue life
may be expressed by [6]:
Although the nature of LCF is attributed to
damage accumulation of plastic strain, the fatigue
kP-- e;(2NJc (8)
2
test is more complicated in terms of controlled
plastic strain. In general, the LCF test is Here E: is cyclic ductility coefficient; c is cyclic
performed on constant-controlled total strain strength exponent. Since the fatigue life of metal
amplitude, and the fatigue life analysis is done by may be greatly affected by cyclic plastic strain,
fatigue curve of total strain amplitude A42 the relationship between the plastic strain
amplitude and fatigue life for each zone is
compared in Fig. 10. It is clear that the fatigue
life of base metal is the longest, and the fatigue

IA i--aIconst.
Krak-gage
I
i
-----_-_-----

100 mAi
C
life of HAZ is the shortest. In practical welding
structures, there are usually stress concentrations
in HAZ due to geometric weld discontinuities
which can be detrimental to fatigue life.
to loo ImV
Therefore the HAZ is the critical zone for the
D whole welded joint. The fatigue damage ac-
I
t 88.8 const.
i(-------w-m--,
(internal Ref. Voltage)
1
i
cumulation of welded joints formed simul-
B taneously in the three zones, and the cyclic
Fig. 6. The KRAK-GAGE potential drop system. fatigue characteristics are also the synthetical
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical heterogeneity 235

\ *ad2(%; = 2.42%

Base metal
0 Fatigue failure
x Experimental Data
I I
102 I03
Reversal cycles 2N

Weld metal
x Fatigue failure
. Experimental Data

I I I
loo
10' 102 I03 IO4
2N

\ Ae,/2(%),= 2.49%

0.32%
-L/,,
‘\ ;
HAZ \ \
x Fatigue failure \ \
\\
l Experimental Data

loon I I I
IO’ 102 I03 IO4

2N
Fig. 7. Variation of stress amplitude with number of cycles for (a) base metal; (b) weld metal: (c) HAZ.

expression of each zone. The weld metal and
HAZ do not have the same fatigue property
parameters anywhere as confirmed by cyclic
hysteresis loops, cyclic response and LCF life. In
order to ensure the integrity of the engineering
structures, the fatigue parameters of the weakest
zone (HAZ) should be used as the fatigue
parameter of the whole welded joint. Therefore,
fairly accurate estimates of fatigue life for
weldment can be obtained using a local
experimental approach on HAZ and weld metal,
respectively.
236 Guangxu Cheng et al.

(a) (b) (cl

1200

loo0
r 1200
r
2 800 2 800
E E
b 600 b 600
a a

400 600

At (%) At (46) At (96)

Fig. 8. Cyclic hysteresis loop plotted with matched lower branches: (a) base metal; (b) weld metal; (c) HAZ.

4 FATIGUE DAMAGE DEVELOPMENT 4.2 Low-cycle fatigue damage evolution of

IN WELDED JOINTS welded joint

4.1 Definition of fatigue damage variable Low-cycle fatigue damage evolution can be
described by a suitable dissipation potential.
According to our experimental results, we
Most fatigue failure events are not all of fatigue obtained the following damage evolution
crack growth directly from internal welded process?
defects; cracks are formed on the surface of the
weld toe where stress is concentrated, the crack D~=Db(l-[1-(x)“““‘]““‘“3 (10)
growth then leads to the structure fracturing
completely. In comparison with crack propaga-
tion, the damage process before macrocrack Here, 0: is the critical damage value; /? is a
formation occupies the greatest fatigue life of the material constant determined by experiment. Ni
structure. Therefore, it is very important to is fatigue initiation life. According to this
investigate the damage process and physical equation, the fatigue damage rate is influenced
mechanism of damage development in a welded by the value of material ductility + and critical
zone. Continuum damage mechanics has prov- damage variable 0: (material constant
ided a method for analyzing the damage parameter).
evolution or development process of microcracks, From the experimental results of low-cycle
voids and microstructure heterogeneity by fatigue damage tests for weld metal, HAZ and
introducing a damage variable D into the base metal respectively, the damage behaviour of
constitutive relation of material. Under the welded joints after some cycles of loading, and
hypothesis of isotropy, the authors defined a new the damage parameters of 0: and p were
damage variable’ determined through the experimental data.
Consequently, we get the damage evolutions in
1 three welding zones:
In -
( l-(8 >
Dti=l- (9) for base metal:
1
In -
( l-ti >
D~=O~707{l-[l-(~~z941,,,9} (lla)
where, + is an original reduction of section area,
$ is a remaining reduction of section area after for weld metal:
loading cycles. Now the damage variable has
been applied to study the damage evolution of .~=O+317{l-[l-(~,)=5*~33’] (llb)
welded joints.
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical heterogeneity 237

10“ r
Strain-controlled test Base metal

l @ Base metal
x @ Weld metal
I I I I
A OHAZ
NT41 I
10 10-4 I I I I
10’ 102 103 IO4 105
IO' 102 103 IO4 IO5
W
2Nr

Fig. 10. The relationship of plastic strain amplitude vs

Strain-controlled test Weldmetal fatigue life for each zone.

Evidently, the damage evolution rates of weld

metal, HAZ and base metal are different.
Comparing them, we find that while the damage
rate of HAZ rises steeply, the damage rate of
base metal shows a comparatively even rise. In
an attempt to correlate this damage process with
damage micromechanism, the fracture surface of
1041 I I I I I a fatigue damaged specimen was analyzed by
10 10’ 102 103 IO4 105 scanning electronic microscopic (SEM); the
W observation showed that the physical mechanism
of damage was different in these three zones. The
100 damage appearance in the weld metal is mainly
Strain-controlled test HAZ
of dimples and there are a large number of
c
nonmetallic inclusions or secondary particles.
Fatigue damage initiates firstly from the bound-
ary of particles and these particles averaged
microcrack initiation. Because plastic deforma-

O.91 0 l Basemetal R=O

0 x Weldmetal
10-41 I I I I I “* t @ AHAZ
IO 10’ 102 103 104 105 0.7t
W
n 0.6-

Fig. 9. The relation of strain amplitude vs fatigue life for 3 0.5-

welded joint. E
; 0.4 -

0.3 -
for HAZ:

Dy’=O.788{1- [l- ($=‘I”““} (llc)

Test results presented in Fig. 11 indicate that Life ratiosN/N,

there is a good agreement between experimental Fig. 11. Fatigue damageevolutions of each zone in welded
data and values calculated by eqns (11). joint.
238 Guangxu
tion in inclusions is more difficult than that in the
matrix such inclusions separate from the matrix
at one or two points of the boundary along the
tension direction. It can be seen that the local
weak zone of weld metal is near inclusions.
Turning to the HAZ, there are a lot of large
grains and local brittle phases due to the heat
cycle in welding process. Slips occur more easily
in the interior of grains than that at grain
boundaries so that inhomogeneous slip and local
plastic strain concentrations occur at the grain
boundaries. Dislocation concentrations are
formed on large size boundaries, which makes
stress concentration at the boundaries. When the
peak stress overtakes critical stress value, the
grain boundaries will separate from each other.
The fatigue life reduction of HAZ is explained in
terms of the local plastic strain concentration
caused from local ductility exhaustion. For the
base metal, the material has good ductility.
Plastic deformation is in progress through slip.
When the cycle number is not too large, slip
occur only in individual grains and is distributed
uniformly. With the cycle number increasing,
some slip bands widened as well as some new slip
bands occurred. When two slip bands intersected
in a grain, this resulted in the microcrack
initiation.
5 FATIGUE CRACK INITIATION AND
GROWTH FROM NOTCH ROOT FOR
WELDED JOINTS
The experimental results of fatigue crack
initiation for each zone of welded joints are
shown in Fig. 12, in which the variation of crack
Fig. 12. Variation of fatigue crack growth rate vs crack length.
Cheng et al.
growth rate da/dN vs crack length a is observed.
Evidently, the crack growth rate is very slow as
the crack length increasing within the range of
O-05 - 0.5 mm, but it evidently increases after the
crack length reaches O-5 mm. The variations of
da/dN vs a show that with either BM, WM or
HAZ, the da/dN decreases with increase of crack
length in small crack regions. When a crack
grows up to a, in length, a dropped point
appeared on da/dN vs a curves (a, is equal to
about O-5 mm for BM specimen, 0.23 mm for
HAZ and O-2mm for WM specimen). In this
paper the initiation life (Ni) is defined as the
number of cycles to initiate a crack of 0.5 mm in
length.
The experimental results are summarized in
Table 4. It shows that the crack initiation life in
WM, HAZ and BM is different. It also can be
seen from Table 4 that the crack initiation life of
the welding zone is 30% of the total failure life
(N,). Therefore, about 30% of fatigue life will be
neglected, if common design methods based on
linear elastic fracture mechanics of pre-crack
specimens are used to predict the fatigue life for
welded joints. Results presented in Fig. 12 show
the possibility of crack initiation life estimation
for weldment, and the study leads to the
conclusion that a fairly accurate fatigue life
design method should include the crack initiation
life.
A new methodology has been presented by the
authors for predicting the initiation life based on
damage mechanics. Fig. 13 shows the relation
between da/dN and AK in base metal, weld
metal and HAZ. For longer cracks (a > a,), the
relationship between da/dN and AK is a simple
straight line in double logarithmic coordinates.
a (mm)
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical heterogeneity 239

Table 4: Fatigue life in three different zones for welded the three zones in welded joints. Furthermore,
joints the variation law of da/dN with AK is related to
Material Total life N, Life ratio of NJN,(%) the fracture mechanism. The fractographic
examination on fracture surfaces for both crack
Base Metal 51739 34.9 initiation and crack growth was performed by
Weld Metal 60439 20.6
HAZ 52599 31.7 SEM to discuss the effect of the microstructure
on the fracture mechanism. It was observed that
the fracture surface between crack initiation and
crack growth was different both in macroscopic
To compare the experimental data in Fig. 13, and microscopic aspects.
the following equation suggested by Paris has In the range of low levels of AK, the fracture
been applied surface of crack initiation is relatively flat and
composed of many straight lines in parallel with
daldN = C(AK)m the direction of crack growth. Striations are not
apparent in the crack initiation zones. The
where the parameters of C and m could be
patterns of cleavage-like river lines are evident
determined from our experimental data by using
the least square method, and following equations and some ridges can be observed. Secondary
cracks were also present in most instances at low
were obtained.
levels of AK. Typical SEM fractographs are
for base metal: shown in Fig. 14. It should be emphasized that
the crack initiation zone is not confined to one
da/dN = 2.1 X 10-10(AK)8’86 (124 grain size but extends over several grain sizes.
Turning to the behaviour in the range of high
for weld metal:
levels of AK, the fracture surface of crack growth
da/dN = 9.44 X 10-10(AK)5’3’ (1W is almost covered by striation-like markings. The
presence of striations indicated that these
for HAZ: specimens experienced a ductile fatigue fracture.
It was shown from fractographic analysis that
da/dN = 8.35 X 10-10(AK)3’4’ (124 crack initiation and crack growth were controlled
The crack growth rate is evidently different for by two different fracture models. The crack
initiation results from dislocation motion along
the slip plane and dislocation motion is
determined by the magnitude of shear stress on
the slip plane. Microcracks initiated either at the
matrix-inclusion interface or brittle non-metallic
inclusions near ‘the notch root surface. Small
cracks generally continue growing along the slip
plane and exhibit no feature at fracture surface.
Therefore, the crack initiation life is influenced
by microstructure and shear stress/strain. For
crack growth stage, the path of crack growth on
the planes which are normal to the maximum
principal tensile stress generally involve micro-
scopic striations. The crack growth stage is
mainly dependent on the stress intensity factor.
xWM Therefore, the material and mechanical heterog-
. HAZ
eneous of welding joint has a strong influence on
the fatigue initiation life strongly and to a smaller
I I I III1
extent on crack growth life. As mentioned above,
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 the different stages of crack growth correspond to
bK(MPaG different fracture models, the transformation of
Fig. 13. Crack growth rate plotted against stress intensity fracture-mechanism models depends on factors
range in three zones. such as: material; environment condition; test
240 Guangxu Cheng et al.

Fig. 14. Behaviour and micromechanism in each phase of fatigue crack growth.

condition; stress intensity factor. In this test, the

main purpose is the investigation of the effect of HAZ:
material properties on the crack growth rate and
fracture mechanism. It is found that the main weld metal:
controlling factors of fracture mechanism are the
material yield strength CT,and grain size d. If the
multiple factor of (Art/d) is used to express this Here, ArT, is the reverse plastic size at fatigue
influence law, the order of the multiple factors in crack tip; it is given by
each zone can be obtained from the experimental 2
results: as follows:

for base metal:

where, AK is stress intensity factor amplitude, (Y’
 Fatigue behaviour for welded joint with mechanical
is the coefficient. The effect of multiple factor on
fracture mechanism is shown in Fig. 14.
6 DISCUSSION OF WEAKEST-CHAIN
MODEL OF WELDED JOINTS
From the results described above, it seems that
fatigue life prediction may be calculated possible
by the plastic strain at a local region. The total
plastic displacement of a welded joint specimen,
Ae,L (L is a gauge length), is given by the
summation of the weld metal, HAZ and base
metal displacements:
A.spL = AEONL, -I- A.spHL, + AEONL,
where, AEON, AEON and AcPB are plastic strain
ranges in the weld metal, HAZ and base metal,
respectively; Lw, L, and L, are equivalent gauge
length of the weld metal, HAZ and base metal,
respectively, as shown in Fig. 15.
The weakest-chain model means that the
welded joint is composed of three parts, and the
three parts are imagined as three chains. The
chain of shortest life is assumed the weakest
chain and the fatigue life of the weakest chain is
just the life of the welded joint. The life of the
weakest chain can be calculated by local damage
theory.
7 CONCLUSIONS
In regard to the material and mechanical
heterogeneity in welded joints, the low-cycle
fatigue life and fatigue damage were studied for
weld metal, heat-affected zone and base metal of
16 MnR pressure vessel steel, respectively. The
characteristics of hysteresis loops and cyclic
parameters in each zone of welded joints were
obtained. Mathematical models of hysteresis
Fig. 15. Plastic displacement of a welded joint is composed
of three parts.
heterogeneity 241
loops and calculation formulae of hysteresis
energy for Masing and non-Masing material were
established. The calculated values were com-
pared with experimental data: the values agree
well with the results of experimental tests.
The characteristics of hysteresis loops show
that the base metal of 16MnR appears obviously
to follow a non-Masing description, but weld
metal and HAZ follow approximately Masing
behaviour. It is apparent that the mechanical
heterogeneity has an influence on the fatigue
behaviour. The experimental results indicate that
the base metal undergoes cyclic hardening,
whereas weld metal and HAZ present cyclic
softening. Base metal has higher fatigue life than
that of weld metal and HAZ for all strain
amplitudes. The results of low-cycle fatigue tests
indicate that the fatigue life of HAZ is shortest
compared with the life of base metal and weld
metal. The lack of ductility in HAZ causes the
reduction of its fatigue life. Fatigue behaviour of
HAZ plays an important role in design of
welding structures.
A new fatigue damage variable was defined
and was applied to study the low-cycle fatigue
damage of welded joints. Damage evolutions of
weld metal, HAZ and base metal were
investigated through continuum damage mechan-
ics theory.
A circular-notched, compact tension specimen
was designed and the notches of the specimens
were put on weld metal, HAZ and base metal,
respectively. The whole process of fatigue crack
initiation and growth as well as the effect of
mechanical heterogeneity on the behaviour of
fatigue initiation and crack growth in each
welded zone were investigated.
The local failure criterion based on weakest-
chain model has been presented for a welded
joint. The fatigue life of welded joints with
mechanical heterogeneity can be predicted by
this local criterion.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to express their
appreciation of the financial support by National
Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
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