An improved procedure for the determination of hot spot stresses in tubular joints

A conventional finite element method may show a weakness when determining the hot spot stress distributions in the brace/chord intersection region of offshore tubular joints. This is because the chosen element displacement functions do not implicitly satisfy the conditions which prevail on the free surfaces. A procedure has been proposed to modify the conventional finite element method so as to allow the hot spot stresses, which occur at the free boundary of the weld toe of tubular joints, to be determined with improved accuracy. The results obtained by this modified method are compared with both an experimental and a traditional finite element solution. The comparison shows that the modified solution is in better agreement with the experimental data as compared with the traditional solution.