Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Different Static Mechanical Properties and Inclined Welding on the Fatigue Strength of Welded Aluminum Details

Abstract

Civil engineering structures are often loaded cyclically in addition to static loading. For the design of cyclic-loaded aluminum structures, EN 1999-1-3 provides several notch cases for a verification based on the nominal stress concept. These notch cases do not distinguish between the different available alloys exhibiting varying characteristics, such as static mechanical properties in the heat-affected zone. Furthermore, for welded details only longitudinal or transverse welding is covered without the possibility for considering inclined welding with multiaxial stress states. However, load-controlled fatigue testing of two different alloys and specimens out of base material, specimens with 45° welding and transverse welding, respectively, have shown the clear influence of alloy and weld angle on the fatigue strength of welded aluminum details. In this paper, the respective experimental and numerical results of two alloys, EN AW-6082 T6 and EN AW-5754 O/H111, and two weld angles, 45° and 90°, are presented and discussed.

Keywords

• fatigue
• aluminum alloys
• heat-affected zone
• inclined welding
• multiaxial stress state at weld
• fatigue loading