Concentrated stress location areas for welded tubular T-joints under deflected bending load

Abstract

The welded tubular joints can be used in several industrial fields including, metallic bridges, telecommunication tripods, oil platforms and pipelines. These structures can be damaged by concentrated stresses located in the toe weld vicinity. Semi-parametric formulas, currently available in the literature, can be used to predict the value of the stress concentration factor without given the hot spot location. In this work, a Finite Elements modeling was carried out for a T-joint, in order to have the concentrated stress value around the weld toe. This work was investigated for a series of combined loads.