Mid- and High-Cycle Fatigue of Welded Joints in Steel Marine Structures

Abstract

The characteristic far field response spectrum of welded joints – the governing fatigue sensitive locations in steel marine structures – is predominantly linear elastic, meaning mid- and high-cycle fatigue (MCF and HCF) is most important for design. Using the effective notch stress- and the total stress concept, involving respectively S_e and S_T as intact- and cracked geometry fatigue strength criterion, one MCF-HCF resistance curve has been obtained for all welded joints. A generalised random fatigue limit model explicitly incorporating the MCF life time and HCF strength limit scatter provides statistically the most accurate fatigue strength and fatigue life time estimates. Similar MCF performance is obtained for S_e and S_T. Although crack growth dominates the MCF damage process, the results for an initiation related criterion like S_e and natural crack growth related criterion like S_T are similar. Adopting S_e rather than S_T as fatigue strength criterion naturally related to the crack initiation dominated HCF region showing the largest data scatter may explain the better effective notch stress concept HCF performance. Since the HCF resistance scatter is relatively large, the MCF-HCF generalised random fatigue limit model design curves show approximately 1-slope behaviour. meaning that for design purposes a linear Basquin model approximation rather than a piecewise continuous bi-linear MCF-HCF formulation according to guidelines, standards and classification notes should be adopted.