Abstract
Stainless steel sheets are widely used as the structure material for the railroad cars and the commercial vehicles. These kinds structures used stainless steel sheets are commonly fabricated by using the gas welding. Gas welding is very important and useful technology in fabrication of a railroad car and vehicles structure.However fatigue strength of the gas welded joints is considerably lower than parent metal due to stress concentration at the weld, fatigue strength evaluation of gas welded joints are very important to evaluate the reliability and durability of railroad cars and to establish a criterion of long life fatigue design. In this paper, $({\Delta}{\sigma}_a)_R-N_f$ curve were obtained by fatigue tests. Using these results, the accelerated life test(ALT) was conducted. From the experimental results, an acceleration model was derived and acceleration factors are estimated. So it is intended to obtain the useful information for the fatigue lifetime of plug and ring gas welded joints and data analysis by statistic reliability method, to save time and cost, and to develop optimum accelerated life prediction plans.
