Fatigue Life Analysis of Butt-welded Joint with and without Postweld Heat Treatment by Local Strain Approach

국부변형률 방법을 이용한 용접후열처리 전후 시편의 피로수명 해석

The problem of residual stresses and fatigue behavior in welded structures is the main concern of welding research fields. The residual stresses and distortions of structures by welding exert negative effect on the safety of mechanical structures. Postweld heat treatment is usually carried out to relieve this residual stresses of welded joints. In this paper the influence of postweld heat treatment on fatigue life of butt-welded joint was investigated. To predict the effect of PWHT, an analytical model is developed by finite element and local strain approach and the result of fatigue life analysis is compared to experimental results. It is demonstrated that fatigue life estimates closely approximate the experimental results and PWHT provides some increase of fatigue lives in long-life fatigue region and no increase in short-life fatigue region because of the residual stress relaxation under tensile loads.