Fatigue-strength assessment of laser welds in corrugated core steel sandwich panels
Journal article, 2020

The work presented in this paper addresses the topic of fatigue in laser stake-welds that join the constituent plates in corrugated core steel sandwich panels for bridge application. In order to investigate the fatigue strength of the stake-welds, and furthermore the panel joints, numerical analyses and experimental tests have been conducted for specimens of “cell”- and “panel”-types. Load-cases that produce joint-deformations of the smaller cell-specimens were adopted to reflect the deformation of full-scale panel joints. The investigations regard both conventional structural C-Mn and stainless steel materials. In addition to the common mode of crack propagation through the weld itself, a mode of cracking that initiates at the stake-weld root and propagates through the base plate was observed in the experiments. Regardless of the type of crack-mode, the results of this paper show that the fatigue-strength given in current recommendations, based on the effective notch stress as the fatigue parameter, can be used for fatigue design of laser-welded bridge decks. In addition to the fatigue tests on the smaller scale cell-specimens, a larger scale panel was tested where the results proof the concept of using laser-welded corrugated core steel sandwich panels for bridge application, with respect to fatigue performance.

Corrugated core

Fatigue

Laser-weld

Steel sandwich panel

Effective notch stress

Author

Peter Nilsson

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering

Mohammad al-Emrani

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering

Rasoul Atashipour

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering

Journal of Constructional Steel Research

0143-974X (ISSN)

Vol. 164 105797

Saving Weight by Using Steel Sandwich Bridge Decks

Swedish Transport Administration (2016/74818), 2016-06-01 -- 2019-09-30.

Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) (2011 067932), 2015-01-01 -- 2019-12-31.

Subject Categories

Civil Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.jcsr.2019.105797

More information

Latest update

12/4/2019