Comparison of Post-Weld Treatment of High-Strength Steel Welded Joints in Medium Cycle Fatigue

This paper presents a comparison of three post-weld treatments for fatigue life improvement of welded joints. The objective is to determine the most suitable post-weld treatment for implementation in mass production of certain crane components manufactured from very high-strength steel. The processes investigated are: burr grinding, TIG dressing and ultrasonic impact treatment. The focus of this investigation is on the so-called medium cycle area, i.e. 10 000–500 000 cycles and very high stress ranges. In this area of fatigue design, the use of very high-strength steel becomes necessary, since the stress range can exceed the yield-strength of ordinary structural steel, especially when considering positive stress ratios (R > 0). Fatigue experiments and qualitative evaluation of the different post-weld treatments leads to the selection of TIG dressing. The process of implementing TIG dressing in mass production and some inherent initial problems are discussed. The treatment of a few critical welds leads to a significant increase in fatigue performance of the entire structure and the possibility for better utilization of very high-strength steel.