Effect of leg of fillet on stress distribution in weldments of large steel water pipes

수도용 대형 강관 용접부의 응력분포에 미치는 각장(leg of fillet)의 영향

Large steel water pipes are joined prevalently by bell and method and welded at inside and outside of lapped parts. According to the Korean Standard(KS) for fabrication of water pipes, the weldments are designed to have the length of leg which is same as or larger than the thickness of the pipe. It is recently pointed out that the standard size of weldments is too large, which results in an excessive consumption of material and labor. In this study, several cases of weldments having different sizes were investigated to reduce the length of leg to the effective size. For each case, the analysis of stresses was carried out to evaluate the safety of the welded pipes by using a package program, ANSYS, under the consideration of the loading condition of water pipes which includes the soil pressure on the pipe, the load over the road, and temperature change of the pipe. The results of this study revealed that the weldment which has the length of leg of the size over 0.7*thickness of the pipe could provide a stress level below the yield strength. Especially when the length of leg is 85% of the wall thickness, the maximum equivalent stress is only slightly higher than that of the leg of fillet of the size of 1.0*pipe thickness.