Fatigue strength improvement of longitudinal fillet welded out-of-plane gusset joints using air blast cleaning treatment

Blast cleaning treatments are used widely in newly built steel structures to clean forged surfaces and increase the adhesive properties of subsequent coatings. On the other hand, the beneficial effects of a blast cleaning treatment, which are similar to shot peening, on the fatigue strength of welded steel structures are not considered in the fatigue design procedure. In this study, fatigue tests were carried out on as-welded and blast-treated longitudinal fillet welded out-of-plane gusset joints subjected to three different cyclic loading conditions: uniaxial tension, out-of-plane bending and in-plane bending stress cycles. The effect of the blast cleaning treatment on the fatigue strength of the gusset joints was studied. The fatigue tests showed that the blast cleaning treatment increased the fatigue strength of the gusset welded joints, particularly at the lower stress range. A 19% increase in fatigue strength at 2 million cycles and 66% increase in fatigue limit could be realized using the blast cleaning treatment.

► Beneficial effect of blast cleaning for subsequent coating applications on fatigue. ► Fatigue test of longitudinal out-of-plane gusset welded joints with blast cleaning. ► Blast cleaning introduces compressive residual stresses of 50–300 MPa. ► Blast cleaning increases by 19% for fatigue strength at 2 million cycles. ► Blast cleaning increases by 66% for the fatigue limit at 10 million cycles.