Estimation of Fatigue Life of Laser Welded AISI304 Stainless Steel T-Joint Based on Experiments and Recommendations in Design Codes

In this paper the fatigue behavior of laser welded T-joints of stainless steel AISI304 is investigated experimentally. In the fatigue experiments 36 specimens with a sheet thickness of 1 mm are exposed to one-dimensional cyclic loading. Three different types of specimens are adopted. Three groups of specimens are used, two of these are non-welded and the third is welded with a transverse welding (T-Joint). The 13 laser welded specimens are cut out with a milling cutter. The non-welded specimens are divided in 13 specimens cut out with a milling cutter and 10 specimens cut out by a plasma cutter. The non-welded specimens are used to study the influence of heat and surface effects on the fatigue life. The fatigue life from the experiments is compared to fatigue life calculated from the guidelines in the standards DNV-RP-C203 and EUROCODE 3 EN-1993-1-9. Insignificant differences in fatigue life of the welded and non-welded specimens are observed in the experiments and the largest difference is found in the High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) area. The specimens show a lower fatigue life compared to DNV-RP-C203 and EUROCODE 3 EN-1993-1-9 when the specimens are exposed to less than 4.0 1E06 cycles. Therefore, we conclude that the fatigue life assessment according to the mentioned standards is not satisfactory and reliable.