Abstract
A lot of kinds of the welded joints are employed in steel structures, and transverse butt welded joints are the most fundamental ones. In case that the joints have lack-of-penetration, the fatigue strength drastically decreases. In fact, there are some cases that the fatigue damage has been detected due to the lack-of-penetration. Therefore, some researches have been done about the fatigue strength of the transverse butt joint with the lack-of-penetration. However, fatigue strength of the joints with weld reinforcement in addition to the lack of penetration has not been made clear yet.
In this study, in order to make clear the fatigue strength of the transverse butt welded joints and propose the fatigue strength evaluation expression for obtaining the fatigue strength, fatigue tests and fatigue crack propagation analyses have been carried out on model specimens and analytical models with various shape and size of reinforcements, length of lack of penetration and plate thickness.
