EVALUATION OF CRACK OCCURRENCE PROBABILITY OF T-SHAPE WELDED STRUCTURES

Welded structures are vulnerable to fracture due to cracks, especially at the welds. To investigate the safety of T-Shape welded structures used in some construction sites, a method is proposed in this paper to evaluate the crack occurrence probabilities of the structures. Three major factors that affect the crack occurrence are taken into consideration. They are residual stress, diffusible hydrogen content and chemical composition of the weld metal. In the analysis, finite element analysis is performed to find the residual stress distribution of the structures. The uncertainties of diffusible hydrogen content and chemical composition are treated as random variables. The critical cooling time is found and utilized for evaluating the crack occurrence probability of the welded structure. Numerical results indicate that T-shape welded joints lead to higher residual stresses and higher crack occurrence probabilities in comparison with the traditional butt joints. Therefore, more attention should be paid to this kind of welded joints when they are used.