30-03-10 Senior Welding Inspection Preparatory for CSWIP 3.2 Fractured Surfaces Course Lecturers Notes Tony Whitaker Inc’ Eng. M Weld I. EWE. IWE. EWI IWI LCG Principal Lecturer/Examiner TWI W1yiddle EastFractured Surfaces Fatigue is a mechanism of failure experienced by materials under the action of a cyclic stress. It involves initiation and growth of a crack under an applied stress amplitude that may lay well within the static capacity of the material. Discontinuities such as changes in section or material flaws are favoured sites for fatigue initiation. During subsequent propagation the crack grows a microscopic amount with each load cycle. The crack so- formed often remains tightly closed, and thus difficult to find by visual inspection during the majority of the life. If cracking remains undiscovered, there is a risk that it may spread across a significant portion of the load-bearing cross section, leading to final separation by fracture of the remaining ligament. Fatigue cracks occur in many materials including metals, plastics, composites and ceramics. It is the most common mode of failure in structural and mechanical engineering components. Fatigue failure is synonymous with the aviation industry poor design of the first jet airliner the De- Havilland Comet 4C caused fatigue failures with loss of all life on two aircraft after only 10,000 hrs of flying time. Remediation included the changing of the window design to a more ovular form with much lower stress concentration. The latest A 380 Air Bus is protected in highly stressed areas by the use of a laminated aluminium/glass structure termed GLARE that can arrest any fatigue crack between its laminations of 5 — 20 layers with the expected fatigue service life of the aircraft being extended from 20 — 50+ years. ‘The fatigue phenomenon has been investigated extensively over many decades, particularly in metals and metallic alloys and as a result design guidance is readily available in many texis and is widely codified. Joints in materials are particularly susceptible to fatigue and therefore need to be designed with care for cyclic loading. Fatigue design rules for welded and bolted connections in steel can be found in many national standards, e.g. BS 7608 and BS 5400 widely used in the UK. Morphology: Fatigue cracks generally exhibit a smooth polished surface (caused by burishing) and propagate at 90° to the direction of applied stress. The initiation points can usually be identified as weld flaws/features, machining marks or geometrical stress raisers. In some instances striations and beachmarks can be seen. Striations can be viewed using and electron microscope and are a record of the crack growing under each loading cycle. Beachmarks can be seen with the naked eye and can indicate a change in loading pattern. Both of these phenomena can be used to estimate the fatigue crack growth rate. Fatigue cracks continue to grow until the increasing level of stress cannot be supported with the final few cycles inducing larger amounts of fracture surface and final fracture occurs. ‘The final fracture surface will show an area of fatigue failure emanating from the fracture initiation point, with the fractured surface characterised by beach marks. These beach marks may no longer be visible due to burnishing caused by metal/metal contact, though the final beachmark at the point of final failure is as a rule generally always present. Senior Welding Inspector Rev 30-03-10 Fractured Surfaces ‘Tony Whitaker Principal Lecturer TWL Vjiddle East |Beachmarks — initiation site arrowed Fatigue desig The standard method of representing fatigue test data is on an S-N curve. This plots either the stress or strain range on the y-axis and the number of cycles to failure on the x-axis. ‘The lower the stress range, the more cycles are required to cause failure. When potted on logarithmic axes the data for a particular specimen type can be approximated to a straight line between 10° and 10’ cycles. Under constant amplitude loading conditions most materials exhibit a fatigue limit. It is believed that tests performed at stress ranges below this limit will never cause a fatigue failure. For un-welded steels the fatigue limit occurs at approximately 2 million cycles, for welded steels and aluminium alloys this is closer to 10 million cycles. Because of the relatively low fatigue limit, aircraft components made from aluminium alloys have a finite lifespan, after which they are replaced. Fatigue is generally independent of rate of loading and temperature except at very high temperatures when creep is likely. However, the presence of a corrosive environment e.g. sea-water) can have a significant detrimental effect on fatigue performance in the form of corrosion fatigue. ‘Senior Welding Inspector Rev 30-03-10 Fractured Surfaces ‘Tony Whitaker Principal Lecturer TWL Middle ast 2