The effect of weld residual stresses and their re-distribution with crack growth during fatigue under constant amplitude loading

Liljedahl, C. D. M.; Zanellato, O.; Fitzpatrick, M. E.; Lin, J. and Edwards, L. (2010). The effect of weld residual stresses and their re-distribution with crack growth during fatigue under constant amplitude loading. International Journal of Fatigue, 32(4) pp. 735–743.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2009.10.012

Abstract

In this work the evolution of the residual stresses in a MIG-welded 2024-T3 aluminium alloy M(T) specimen during in-situ fatigue crack growth at constant load amplitude has been measured with neutron diffraction. The plastic relaxation and plasticity-induced residual stresses associated with the fatigue loading were found to be small compared with the stresses arising due to elastic redistribution of the initial residual stress field. The elastic redistribution was modelled with a finite element simulation and a good correlation between the experimentally-determined and the modelled stresses was found. A significant mean stress effect on the fatigue crack growth rate was seen and this was also accurately predicted using the measured initial residual stresses.