Remaining fatigue lives of similar surface flaws in accordance with combination rules

Lu, K.; Li, Y.; 長谷川 邦夫*; Lacroix, V.*

Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology, 139(2), p.021407_1 - 021407_6, 2017/04

https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4035317

When multiple flaws are detected in structural components, remaining lives of the components are estimated by fatigue flaw growth calculations using combination rules in fitness-for-service (FFS) codes. A lot of FFS codes provide combination rules for multiple flaws, however, these combination rules are significantly different among the various FFS codes. Fatigue flaw growth for two similar adjacent surface flaws in a pipe subjected to cyclic tensile stress were obtained by numerical calculations using these different combination rules. In addition, fatigue lives taking into account interaction effect between the two similar flaws were conducted by extended finite element method (X-FEM). As the calculation results, it is found that the fatigue lives calculated by the X-FEM are close to those by the ASME Code. Finally, it is worth noticing that the combination rule provided by the ASME Code is appropriate for fatigue flaw growth calculations.