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.