Niclas Stenberg

Abstract

In this report handling of fatigue evaluations of continuous welds in a typical FE-environment has been investigated. Tests have been made by handling fatigue evaluations of known geometries and compare the results with experimental data from previous reports.

It has been shown that it is possible to use commercial software packages for this task. However, even though there exist solutions on the market there are still problems that have not been solved yet.

A list of problems still to be solved:

• This is a relatively new technique and the documentation around how to use these commercial software packages in some cases are basically non-existing
• Even though the desire to model continuous welds in a global structure with mesh incompatible elements is immense there is no robust technique yet
• The start and stop regions of disrupted continuous welds are not yet fully investigated
• Some predefined meshing techniques are required, by the fatigue evaluation software, to mesh the weld and its vicinity.

However, regardless of these problems fatigue evaluation of continuous welds can today be incorporated in a typical FE-environment using the right tools and determination. But, caution must be taken due to the causes listed above. Also, handling of FE-results and and overall usability might improve rapidly in the coming years.