Study on fatigue strength in terms of stresses measured by strain gauges attached with its ends to be at weld toes

Abstract

To evaluate stresses including stress concentration at weld toes for fatigue evaluation of complex shape welded structures such as railway bogie frames, previous studies proposed the stress assessment procedure through measuring strains of actual structures by attaching strain gauges with its edges to be at weld toes. This paper evaluates design fatigue strength in terms of the measured stress from published fatigue data and re-analysis of those fatigue tests. The obtained fatigue strength fell into danger side by 12-29% if compared to the fatigue strength estimated based on the current version of JIS. The result also showed that fatigue strength at 2×106 cycles with 0.13% failure probability had a similar value with that at 1×107 cycles with 2.3% failure probability. The fatigue strength in terms of the aforementioned strain measuring system was comparable with those in terms of structural hot-spot stress approach.

Keywords

• modeling
• state estimation
• durability
• welded joints
• fatigue strength
• strain gauge
• finite element analysis