Experimental and Numerical Prediction of Fatigue Behavior of Ring Type Specimen

Nuclear pressure vessels are generally made of butt weld joints which are larger in size. Since it is difficult to perform experimental investigation on large structures with weld defects, a ring specimen of simpler geometry is considered for investigation. An experimental setup was fabricated to apply repeated loading on ring specimen, and the fatigue life of ring specimen with various weld defects like lack of penetration, lack of fusion, porosity, and undercut was recorded. Also, finite element models of ring specimen incorporated with weld defects are used to predict the fatigue life, and the same is compared with experimental results. The methodology adopted in the present work can be extended to investigate the influence of weld defects on fatigue life of roof slab.