ABSTRACT

Crack growth modelling in industrial welded structures

Failures in engineering structures occur predominately at connections such as welded
joints. For example fatigue crack in bridges, off shore structures, pressure vessels etc.
occurs almost at joints. The computational methods can be used to model the welded
joints to predict their behavior. Finite element method can be used to model various joints
with different boundary conditions. There is mesh related difficulties in encountering
problems such as crack propagation in conventional finite element method. The meshless
method can be used to overcome this computational problem.
There are many parameters involved in the fracture properties of weldments which
includes composition and properties of base material and weld material, welding process,
heat affected zone and occurrence of residual stress. The weld joint to be reproduced by
including these effects and appropriate computational model has to be developed.