Abstract

ATEHORTUA-LOPEZ, Daniel Fernando et al. Development of a physical simulation method of steel welds for fatigue crack propagation studies, on heat affected zones. Rev. Fac. ing. [online]. 2016, vol.25, n.42, pp.33-54. ISSN 0121-1129.

In order to study the fatigue crack propagation in the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) of structural steel weld joints, test specimens of 90 mm x 49,5 mm x 7 mm in size were used to carry out the simulations, for which a special procedure was required to be developed in the Gleeble system. By doing so, the fine grain zone, the coarse grain zone and the multi-pass zone of a weld joint produced by FCAW were successfully reproduced separately on different samples of the corresponding base metal. The simulated zones were reproducible, homogeneous, defect free, residual-stress-free and large enough; besides their microstructural characteristics (such as grain size and phase percentage) were very close to their real counterparts, which made it possible to study the actual effect of HAZ microstructure on the fatigue crack propagation rate in these zones for the first time. Therefore, the development enabled to significantly increase applications and the advantages of this technique, while allowed improving the understanding of fatigue behavior in steel weld joints.

Keywords : fatigue crack propagation; HAZ microstructural variation; HAZ physical simulation; structural steel welding.

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