Scaling Up – From Material Fracture Resistance to Fracture Representation in Welded Structures

This paper presents a procedure to integrate the material fracture resistance, quantified by the experimentally measured J-R curve, in the fracture representation of welded tubular joints. This method incorporates a validated η-approach to estimate the elastic-plastic crack driving forces for fatigue cracks initiated at hot-spot locations of the welded tubular joints. The proposed scaling approach predicates on the fundamental assumption that the fracture resistance measured from the J-R curve, with a small and limited amount of crack extension, characterizes the material fracture resistance independent of the specimen geometry. The maximum crack extension allowed in the material testing standard marks the transferability limit of the material J-R curve to the welded joints. The extension of the fatigue crack in the welded joint leads to an increasing fracture resistance and a decreasing load resistance due to the increased crack area. The validation of this approach utilizes load-deformation responses from two scales of experimental specimens: 1) the large-scale welded tubular connection with a fatigue pre-crack; and 2) the large-scale frame test with predominantly fracture failure at the welded tubular joint. The load-deformation relationship based on the proposed scheme presents a close agreement with the experimentally recorded load-deformation behavior of the welded tubular joints. The proposed approach, when integrated into the push-over analyses of the large-scale tubular frames, presents an accurate estimation on the deformation level at which unstable fracture failure occurs and a conservative prediction of the corresponding failure load.