Crack growth analysis for stainless steel piping weld considering material boundary

Masaki, Koichi*; Osakabe, Kazuya*; Katsuyama, Jinya  ; Kikuchi, Masanori*

S-version finite element method (S-FEM) is an evaluation method for fully automatic crack growth simulation system on the basis of auto-mesh technique. S-FEM has been applied to simulate the crack growth considering the material boundary. Crack growth analyses have been conducted for a plate consisted of two different materials by tensile membrane stress and a stainless steel piping under weld residual stress field. Effects of the crack growth rates in the different materials on the behavior of the crack growth have been evaluated by S-FEM and the influence function method. Results show that the crack sizes obtained from each method are in a good agreement.