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Fatigue of girth butt weld for cast steel node connection in tower structure under wave loadings
Author(s) -
Jin Hui,
Li Jing,
Mo Jianhua,
Ma Haiying
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the structural design of tall and special buildings
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.895
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1541-7808
pISSN - 1541-7794
DOI - 10.1002/tal.1111
Subject(s) - structural engineering , girth (graph theory) , welding , node (physics) , tower , engineering , butt joint , finite element method , stress (linguistics) , butt welding , fatigue limit , materials science , mechanical engineering , mathematics , linguistics , philosophy , combinatorics
SUMMARY The application of cast steel node shows a popular tendency in long‐span space structures. The girth butt welds in the joint are the critical parts under fatigue loading. This study presents a fatigue life evaluation of the girth butt welds for the cast steel node connections, which are in a steel tower structure on an offshore platform under heavy wave fatigue loadings. The refined node FEM model is built including the welds. The random waves are treated as ergodic stationary stochastic process; the node structure is considered as a linear dynamic amplification system to decide its output of the stress amplitude response while the random wave is inputted into the system. The welds are designed as different details of bilateral weld, single‐sided weld with a sleeve, single‐sided weld with a backing plate or without a backing plate. The fatigue life of every weld detail is studied by hot‐spot stress method, and the design of weld detail combination is analyzed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.