Abstract
Various kinds of welded joints are being used in many structures such as ships, bridges and constructions. It is important in reliability analysis of such structures to clarify the statistical fatigue property of the welded joints. In this study, fatigue tests were carried out on the butt-welded joints of SM50A steel and a theoretical interpretation on the fatigue life distribution was attempted, assuming that a butt-welded joint is composed of a number of sliced specimens with different fatigue strengths. Main results obtained are summarized as follows;
(1) The median crack initiation life of the butt-welded joint specimens coincided with that of the sliced specimens, when the crack initiation was defined by a 0.2mm crack in the sliced specimens or the equivalent state of stress intensity factor in the joint specimens.
(2) The distribution of crack initiation lives of the butt-welded joints can be theoretically derived by combining the concept of extreme distribution and the distribution model on the number of fatigue cracks. The theoretical distribution of crack initiation lives of the joints is in good agreement with the general trend of the experimental results.
(3) If the distribution of crack initiation lives and the crack growth law are given experimentally, one can obtain analytically the distribution of final fatigue lives. The fatigue life distribution of the sliced specimens can be explained by the theory established in this study.
