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The effect of weldment size and sea water exposure on the fatigue life of welded tubular joints

Conference ·
OSTI ID:27924
;  [1]
  1. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)

A database containing all available welded tubular joint fatigue test data is under development to assess the fatigue design curves in the American Petroleum Institute design code (API RP2A). Screening criteria were used to refine the database. Screening increased the correlation coefficient ({rho}) of the S-N curves only slightly. Both the S-N data for air and for sea water were corrected for weldment size using the estimate of the weldment size effect determined using the screened air data. Correcting the screened air data with the variable weldment size effect exponent (n) substantially increased the correlation coefficient. Further restricting the data set to geometrically-similar, screened air data with {beta}={tau}=0.5 and correcting for weldment size using the variable weldment size effect exponent (n) further increased the correlation coefficient. The weldment size effect for the screened air data was found to be much larger than the values recommended in current design codes. The weldment size effect was found to vary from 0.30 at short lives (5E+05 cycles) to 0.52 at long lives (8E+06 cycles). A weldment size effect was also observed for the sea water data, but it was not possible to estimate the magnitude of this effect due to the limited amount of data available.

OSTI ID:
27924
Report Number(s):
CONF-940230--; ISBN 0-7918-1266-9
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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