A methodology for assessment and retrofitting by TIG dressing of existing pre-fatigued welded steel joints

Paper in proceeding, 2021

Several fatigue life extension methods of a welded structure are coveted in the industry such as Tungsten-Inert-Gas Dressing (TIG dressing). This paper presents a framework for a fatigue assessment and retrofitting of welded structures by TIG dressing. The proposed framework provides in detail the parameters that have an influence on fatigue life which can be divided into two groups, the first is related to the structure prior to treatment such (e.g: crack dimension, toe radius, and residual stresses) while the second is related to the state of the structure following the treatment (e.g: treatment depth, residual stresses and resulted toe radius). Experimental results, from the current work, were complemented with tests from literature to verify the proposed framework. An analysis between our predictions and reported values of fatigue life from literature show an absolute error of 20%.