• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.45-55
• /
• 2015

Because of the high stress concentration near the toe of a welded joint, the calculation of local stress using the finite element method which is relevant to the fatigue strength of the weld toe crack, is a challenging task. This is mainly caused by the sensitivity of finite element analysis, which usually occurs near the area of a dramatically changing stress field. This paper presents a novel numerical method through which a less mesh-sensitive local stress calculation can be achieved based on the 3D solid finite element, strictly sticking to the original definition of hot spot stress. In order to achieve the goal, a traction stress, defined at 0.5t and 1.5t away from the weld toe, was calculated using either a force-equivalent or work-equivalent approach, both of which are based on the internal nodal forces on the imaginary cut planes. In the force-equivalent approach, the traction stress on the imaginary cut plane was calculated using the simple force and moment equilibrium, whereas the equivalence of the work done by both the nodal forces and linearized traction stress was employed in the work-equivalent approach. In order to confirm the validity of the proposed method, five typical welded joints widely used in ships and offshore structures were analyzed using five different solid element types and four different mesh sizes. Finally, the performance of the proposed method was compared with that of the traditionally used surface stress extrapolation method. It turned out that the sensitivity of the hot spot stress for the analyzed typical welded joints obtained from the proposed method outperformed the traditional extrapolation method by far.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.24 no.2 s.173
• /
• pp.438-448
• /
• 2000

Mechanical press joining technique has been used in sheet metal joining processes because of its simple process and possibility of joining dissimiliar metals, such as steel and aluminum. The static and cyclic behavior of single overlap AI-alloy and steel(SPCC) joints has been investigate. Relationships were developed to estimate the strength of the joint taking into consideration base metal strength properties and the geometry of the joint. Fatigue test results have shown that fatigue resistance of the SPCC mechanical press joints is almost equal to that of the spot weld at the life of $10^6$ cycles. Also, the dissimilar material jointed specimen with upper SPCC plate and button diameter corresponding to the nugget diameter of the spot welded specimen has almost same strength as the same material jointed specimen and as the spot welded specimen.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.1115-1120
• /
• 2003

The recent tendency in the automobile industries is toward light weighting vehicle body to improve the problems by environmental pollution as well as improving fuel cost. The effective way to reduce the weight of vehicle body seems to be application of new materials for body structure and such trend is remarkable. Among the various materials for vehicle body, stainless steel sheet (for example, 301L and 304L), TRIP steel and cold rolled steel sheets are under the interests. However, in order to guarantee reliability of new material and to establish the long life design criteria of body structure, it is important and require condition to assess spot weldability of them and fatigue strength of spot welded lap joints which were fabricated under optimized spot welding condition. And, recently, a new issue in the design of the spot welded structure is to predict economically fatigue design criterion without additional fatigue tests. In general, for fatigue design of the spot-welded thin sheet structure, additional fatigue tests according to the welding condition, material, joint type, and fatigue loading condition are generally required. This indicates that much cost and time for it should be consumed. Therefore, in this paper, the maximum stresses at nugget edge of spot weld were calculated through nonlinear finite element analysis first. And next, obtained the ${\Delta}P-N_{f}$ relation through the actual fatigue tests on spot welded lap joints of similar and dissimilar high strength steel sheets. And then, the ${\Delta}P-N_{f}$ relation was rearranged in the ${\Delta}{\sigma}-N_{f}$ relation. From this ${\Delta}{\sigma}-N_{f}$ relation, developed the fatigue design technology for spot welded lap joints of them welded using the optimized welding conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.18 no.9
• /
• pp.179-185
• /
• 2001

In this study, a visual sensor system for weld seam tracking the I-butt weld joints in GMA welding was constructed. The sensor system consists of a CCD camera, a diode laser with a cylindrical lens and a band-pass-filter to overcome the degrading of image due to spatters and arc light. In order to obtain the enhanced image, quantitative relationship between laser intensity and iris number was investigated. Throughout the repeated experiments, the shutter speed was set at 1-milisecond for minimizing the effect of spatters on the image, and therefore most of the spatter trace in the image have been found to be reduced. Region of interest was defined from the entire image and gray level of searched laser line was compared to that of weld line. The differences between these gray levels lead to spot the position of weld joint using central difference method. The results showed that, as long as weld line was within $^\pm$15$^\circ$from the longitudinal straight fine, the system constructed in this study could track the weld line successful1y. Since the processing time reduced to 0.05 sec, it is expected that the developed method could be adopted to high speed welding such as laser welding.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.73-78
• /
• 2009

Characterization of the microweld CCFL electrode for the TFT-LCD backlight unit was carried out in terms of the glass beading heat treatment conditions. We evaluate the weld zone and parent metal of the microweld CCFL electrodes that were exposed to simulated glass beading heat treatment. The CCFL electrode was composed of the cup made with pure Ni, the pin made with pure Mo and the lead wire made with Ni-Mn alloy. Each part of the electrode was assembled together by micro spot welding process and then the assembled electrodes were exposed to simulated glass beading temperatures of $700^{\circ}C,\;750^{\circ}C$ and $800^{\circ}C$. The microstructures of the microweld CCFL electrode were observed by using optical microscope, scanning electron microscope and EDS. Micro-tensile and microhardness test were also carried out. The results indicated that the grain coarsening in the HAZs(heat affected zones) for both the cup-pin weld and pin-lead wire were exhibited and the grain coarsening of the HAZ for the cup and the lead wire was more obvious than the HAZ of the pin. The micro-tensile test revealed that the fracture occurred at the cup-pin weld zone for all test conditions. The fracture surface could be classified into two parts such as pin portion and cup portion including weld nugget. The failure was seemed to be initiated from the boundary between nugget and pin through the weld joint. The result of the microhardness measurement exhibited that the relatively low hardness value, about 105HV was recorded at the HAZ of the cup. This value was about 50% less than that of the original value of the cup. The reduction of the microhardness was considered as the cause of the grain coarsening due to welding process. It was also appeared that there was no change in electric resistance for the standard electrodes and heat treated electrodes.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.93-106
• /
• 2001

T-joint and hopper knuckle joint models are typical welded joints in ship structure, which are very susceptible to fatigue damage under service condition. Fatigue test and fracture mechanical analysis were performed on these joints to find out characteristics of fatigue behavior. Unified S-N curve was developed from the test results of these two types of joint using hot spot stress concept, and also propagation life was also estimated using Paris' crack propagation law. Residual stress effect on propagation life was considered in calculating propagation life, as was done with thermo-elasto-plastic FE analysis and residual stress intensity factor calculation. Fatigue life of similar kinds of welded joint could be predicted with this unified S-N curve and fracture mechanical analysis technique.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.121-126
• /
• 2002

The railroad cars or the commercial vehicles are generally manufactured by the spot welding. Among various kinds of spot welded lap joints, multi-lap joints are one of popular joints in manufacturing their body structures. But, fatigue strength of these joints are lower than that of base metal due to high stress concentration at the nugget edge of the spot weld and are known to considerably be influenced by welding conditions as well as the mechanical and geometrical factors. Thus, it is necessary to establish a reasonable and systematic fatigue design criterion for spot welded multi-lap joints. In this paper, the $\Delta$P-N$_{f}$ curves has been rearranged in the $\Delta$$\sigma$-N$_{f}$ relation with the maximum stress at the nugget edge of spot welded multi-lap joints subjected to tensile shear load. Consequently, the fatigue data were evaluated in terms of fracture mechanics by plotting on the $\Delta$OP-N$_{f}$ curves. From the results obtained, both of them have been revealed to be applicable to fatigue design of spot welded multi-lap joints. However, the fracture mechanical approach is found to be more effective than the maximum stress approach in the range on N$_{f}$$\geq$2x10$^{5}$ . .

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.222-227
• /
• 2004

Under cyclic loading, the fatigue failures of welded joints occur at weld toes which induce stress concentration by weld shape. So we need to obtain the peak stress and the S-N curve to assess the fatigue strength of welded joints. However the measurement of peak stress is of high uncertainty and low reproducibility, so we use nominal stress instead in fatigue tests of welded joints. In this study, fatigue tests to obtain S-N curves and FE analyses to obtain stress concentration factors were conducted for the two types of cruciform fillet welded joints, that is, load-carrying and non load-carrying types. Then we changed the obtained S-N curves to that based on peak stress using the hot-spot stress concept. From the analyses of the S-N curves obtained, we have concluded that there is a need to develop a new method to evaluate the fatigue life.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.36 no.10
• /
• pp.1213-1219
• /
• 2012

A remote $CO_2$ laser system can rapidly change both the distance and the direction of the laser beam by moving a lens and rotating mirrors. It is then easy to weld complex patterns of weld lines. A conventional spot weld joint specimen and a remote $CO_2$ laser weld joint specimen with complex weld line patterns were prepared and tested both statically and dynamically. The relationships between the fatigue strength, i. e. the maximum cyclic force, and the fatigue life were obtained. The fatigue strength of the tested welded joints at two million cycles was found to be approximately 10% of the static strength. Furthermore, it was observed that the fatigue fracture mode changed with the level of the applied cyclic force. The fatigue crack origins were confirmed as the highest stress points found in the structural analysis. The maximum cyclic stress for different weld patterns converges as the fatigue life approaches two million cycles.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.20-26
• /
• 2007

In this study, fatigue strength of load-carrying cruciform fillet welded joints were evaluated using a new method proposed by Yamada, for geometric or structural stress in welded joint, that is, one-millimeter stress below the surface in the direction corresponding to the expected crack path. Validity of the method is verified by analyzing fatigue test results for load-carrying cruciform welded specimens has different size of weld toe radius, leg length and plate thickness reported in literature. Structural stress concentration factor for 1mm below the surface was calculated by finite element analysis for each specimen respectively. When compared to the basic fatigue resistance curve offered by BS7608, the one-millimeter stress method shows conservative evaluation for load-carrying cruciform fillet welded joints.