Fatigue behaviour of welded joints with cracks, repaired by hammer peening

Rehabilitation of a welded structure, which involves repair of cracked joints, is achieved when the local treatment for repair gives a fatigue strength in the joint equal or above the fatigue strength of the uncracked original detail. If the treatment is properly applied the rehabilitation of the detail is assured, and the nature of the weld toe improvement methods can produce a joint, after repair, with a fatigue strength and residual life greater than the initial detail. The paper presents the results obtained on a fatigue study on the rehabilitation of non‐load carrying fillet welded joints loaded in bending at the main plate and with fatigue cracking at the weld toes of the attachment in the main plate and though the plate thickness. Residual stresses were measured at the surface, with X‐ray diffraction. The residual stresses induced by hammer peening at the weld toe were found to be greater along the longitudinal direction of the plate than in the transverse direction. The peak residual stresses near the weld toe were found to be close to yield in compression, justifying the great benefit of hammer peening. Results of a derived gain factor, g, in fatigue life were obtained as a function of the crack depth repaired by hammer peening.