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It is now well accepted that all welded structures contain flaws, and that these do not
necessarily affect structural integrity or service performance. This is implicitly
recognised by most welding fabrication codes which specify weld flaw tolerance
levels based on experience and workmanship practice. However, these flaw
acceptance levels cannot provide quantitative measures of structural integrity, for
instance how 'close' a particular structure containing weld flaws is to the failure
condition. In addition, flaws can develop during service due to e.g. corrosion and
fatigue and the tolerance of the component regarding these needs to be known.
2 Approach
When applying the fitness-for-purpose approach, all potential failure modes should
be identified and an assessment conducted to ensure that the conditions for failure
are not reached during the design life of the structure. Typical failure modes to be
considered include:
Fracture
Fatigue
Gross yielding or plastic collapse
Leakage
Corrosion and erosion
Stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue
Buckling
Creep and creep/fatigue
K I K mat
i.e. if the crack driving force (expressed as the applied stress intensity factor, K I) is
greater or equal than the brittle or ductile fracture toughness, K mat, fracture will
occur. The stress intensity factor characterises the stress field at the crack tip, and it
is the conditions at the crack tip which govern the general behaviour of a cracked
structure.
The applied stress intensity factor, K I, is calculated using relations involving the
geometry of the component, the magnitude of the applied stresses and the crack
dimensions. For elastic-plastic conditions, the strain hardening behaviour of the
material in question is also important. The stress analysis should consider stress
concentrations, including those which may arise from deviations from the intended
design, such as misalignment; and welded residual stresses (of up to yield strength
magnitude) must be taken into account.
K mat is measured using pre-cracked specimens taken from the material which
represent the region in which the subject crack is located. For example, if the subject
crack is located in weld metal, the fracture toughness specimen will be notched and
fatigue pre-cracked into a test weld representing the structural weld. The test
procedures are described in national and international standards [2,3] . Fracture
toughness values are sensitive to material microstructure, heat treatment condition,
loading rate and test temperature (particularly in ferritic steels) and, in certain
circumstances, specimen thickness.
In most structural materials, plasticity effects precede failure, and, in the limit, gross
yielding effects predominate and failure occurs by plastic collapse. To account for the
range of possible behaviours, i.e. elastic fracture, plasticity effects through to plastic
collapse, a two-parameter approach to failure has been developed. This is expressed
in the form of a failure assessment diagram (FAD), see Fig.2.
In this diagram, the proximity to fracture is given on the vertical axis as the ratio of
applied stress intensity, K I, to fracture toughness, K mat:
K r = K I/K mat
The proximity to plastic collapse is given by the ratio of the applied reference stress,
ref, to the yield strength Y.
Lr= ref/ Y
A failure locus provides the connection between K r and L r and any assessment
point falling on or below the failure locus means that the flaw is stable and does not
present a significant risk of failure. Assessment points above the failure locus
represent unacceptable flaws which may cause failure.
6 Fatigue Assessment
Fatigue is a failure mechanism that involves the stable propagation of a crack under
repeated or cyclic loading. Each load cycle causes a very small, but finite amount of
crack extension. The crack therefore extends steadily until a final failure mode such
as fracture or gross yield intervenes.
The basis for all fatigue assessment is the assumption that the increment of crack
extension, da, per cycle, dN, is a function of the applied stress intensity factor range,
K I:
da/dN = A KIm
K I is calculated in the same manner as the applied stress intensity factor, K I for
fracture assessments with the exception that the applied stress ranges rather than
the applied stresses are used.
The initial flaw size often represents the height of a flaw found by non-destructive
testing, and the final flaw size is set by the limiting failure condition, such as through
wall cracking, leakage or the maximum tolerable size calculated using the fracture
assessment procedure described in the previous section. For an assessment based
on the failure analysis diagram ( Fig.2), the final crack size would correspond to a
point on the failure locus.
7 Conclusions
There now exist fully documented and accepted procedures for assessing weld flaws
using fitness-for-purpose principles. Application of these procedures offer extensive
scope for significant cost saving in design and fabrication; during inspection and
operation; and at the end of the design life of welded structures with quantifiably
ensured structural integrity.
8 References
1. BS 7910:2005: 'Guide to methods for assessing the acceptability of flaws in
metallic structures'. London; British Standards Institution, 2005.