Characteristics of Corrosion Fatigue of High Strength Steel for Marine Weld Structure

Large sized marine structures are used under corrosion environment of seawater and applied by severe service loading such as an ocean current, a billow and a tempest. Marine structures are usually constructed by lots of thick wall steel pipes joining welded joints. The thickness of such as steel pipes is usually more than 40mm. The such as steels are called "Thermo-Mechanical Control Process steel (TMCP steel)" strengthened by a heat treatment in process of steel manufactures. The failure, especially crack initiation, of marine structures was starting at weld joints under service condition. Then they should be designed by basis of the fatigue strength under seawater corrosion environment of weld joints. To clarity the fatigue crack initiation behavior is important more than to clarify the crack propagation behavior on the strength design of marine structures, because it is very difficult to find out the crack initiation and propagation phenomena and then even if it will be able to find out, it is considered that the refit of the damaged parts of welded joints have a technical difficulty under the sea. Therefore, it is most important to clarify the corrosion fatigue crack initiation behavior under the seawater condition. But, there is one big difficulty to make a test for thick plate specimen, for example thicker than 40mm. Because, it is need large capacity loading apparatus to test such as thick plate specimen. In this research, the new configuration specimen for fatigue crack initiation tests was proposed. Using this new specimen, it is easy to carry out the fatigue clack initiation tests with relatively low cyclic loading and to observe a fatigue crack initiation behavior.