Eco Weld Safe

Required weld seam quality for compliance with the safety standard for steel structures subject to alternating stresses

In steel construction, but also in related disciplines such as crane construction, the companies carrying out the work are trying to reduce the manufacturing effort and to design in a way that conserves resources. Irrespective of this, the safety standard present in the existing manufacturing process must be maintained.

The aim of the research project is to use simplified manufacturing processes and design types to maintain and verify the existing safety standard of welded, alternately stressed steel structures and to develop and verify design approaches for the associated design types and design qualities.

In this project, the irregularities occurring in weld designs desired by industry are analyzed and their influence on the fatigue strength of steel structures is determined. The focus is on the weld imperfections root notch, insufficient penetration, penetration notch and offset. On the basis of the investigations, new notch classes are to be defined depending on the irregularities that occur. In addition, the achievable weld quality and the associated fatigue strength will be determined for specific design procedures.

On the basis of the fatigue strength values determined by testing in the project for various manufacturing imperfections, the application limits of applicable standard values are to be checked and the computational methods adapted as necessary. In addition to the efficient nominal and structural stress concepts, findings from the local notch stress concept will be included.

As a result, a proposal for a verification method based on nominal, structural and local stresses will be available and presented to the committees for discussion.

The present project results will enable steel construction companies to design in a resource-saving way with lower manufacturing costs than before and to demonstrably meet the required safety standard. Labor-intensive work can be reduced, as the high demands currently placed on the quality of execution of the welds mean that necessary rework can be dispensed with. Steel construction companies (primarily SME) and related industries achieve significant competitive advantages nationally and internationally.