Influence of competing notches on the fatigue strength of cut plate edges

Abstract

Material fatigue is one of the elementary causes of damage in steel construction besides corrosion and abrasion. Design recommendations require that weld seams are placed in less stressed areas due to the crack-sensitive nature of the welded areas. As a result, unwelded areas of the components such as free cut plate edges gain technical and economic relevance as locations for potential fatigue cracks. In the metal processing industry, different thermal cutting processes are frequently used. During the process, unwanted boundary conditions can lead to undesired cuts in the component geometry during the cutting process. These process dysfunctions lead to incorrect components and to rejects. This article presents results of fatigue test data of oxy-fuel thermal cut edges of defect-free and faulty repair-welded samples to investigate the influence of competing notches on the cut edge. Specimens are made from construction steels S355N and S690Q of a 20-mm-thick plate. The presented data shows that the fatigue strength of the damaged cut edges can be recovered by the repair procedure and does not show any reduction of the fatigue strength due to the determined pores or other metallurgical notches of the repaired section.

A comparative study of the thermal and mechanical cutting influence on the cut-edge hardness of structural steels S355 and S1100

“…Many studies showed that the width of HAZ is very narrow induced by thermal cutting processes [26,27].…”