Pauli Lehto

Characterisation of local grain size variation of welded structural steel

Previously, it has been shown that the grain size distribution plays an important role in the mechanical properties of welded steel. In the previous investigation, the volume-weighted average grain size has been shown to capture the influence of grain size distribution, resulting in a better fitting Hall–Petch relationship between grain size and hardness. However, the previous studies exclude the effects arising from local variation in grain size. In this paper, the grain size measurement methods are extended for the characterisation of the local grain size variation, which is significant for welded joints and can have an adverse effect on mechanical properties. The local gradient of grain size variation and its dependency on measurement direction are considered. In addition, examples of grain size and hardness variation are shown for S355 base metal and two weld metals, and characteristic differences are highlighted and discussed. The coarse-grained areas of a heterogeneous microstructure are found to have lower hardness than fine-grained areas. However, the surrounding microstructure, i.e. local grain size gradient, has an influence on the measured hardness values.

Microstructure and Strain-Based Fatigue Life Approach for High-Performance Welds

Microstructure and pre-existing surface flaws in smooth notch geometries significantly affect the fatigue life of welded joints. Traditionally, a welded joint is assumed to incorporate crack-like defects and the crack propagation dominates the total fatigue life. For a smooth weld notch geometry, the macro crack initiation period becomes more significant, and this difference cannot be modelled with the existing stress or fracture mechanics ‑based approaches. In this paper, a microstructure and strain ‑based fatigue life approach is presented. In the approach, the fatigue damage process is modelled as a repeated crack initiation process within a material volume related to the microstructure. The novelty of the developed approach is that the size of the damage zone is defined from the grain size statistics without using fracture mechanics. The approach is able to consider the changes in the stress gradient, stress triaxiality and plasticity during the fatigue crack initiation and growth. The developed approach has been validated with experiments on submerged-arc and laser-hybrid welded joints. The predicted fatigue life, crack growth path and rate showed good agreement with the experiments. For a welded joint with smooth and favourable notch shape, the short crack growth, i.e. macro crack initiation period is dominant and it has a significant influence on the fatigue life.

Fatigue crack growth rate in laser-welded web core sandwich panels - fatigue crack propagation in welded base metal

The all-metal web-core sandwich structure consists of two face plates stiffened by one-directional system of web plates. These web core sandwich structures are used in many structural applications such as ship hulls, offshore platforms, bridge decks, and industrial platforms. However, the stress variation caused by the service loadings can be a determinant factor for crack initiation and growth until early failure of the entire structure. This paper presents an experimental study on fatigue crack growth rate in base material from a face plate after rolling and welding. The study is focused on the analysis of the stress ratio and crack closure effect on the fatigue crack growth rate in two directions. There is a significant stress ratio effect on fatigue crack growth rate, much more pronounced in the case of crack propagation in the longitudinal direction than in the transverse propagation. For all tests, the crack closure effect is more pronounced at low stress intensity factor range (in the threshold domain).