TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 127/1980
By S J Maddox and J G Summers
Background
Tests were carried out to investigate the effect of controlled shot peening on the fatigue behaviour of two types of welded specimen, plates with longitudinal and plates with transverse fillet welded attachments. It was anticipated that any improvement due to controlled shot peening would increase with material tensile strength. In order to explore this, four steels, two structural steels and two quenched and tempered low alloy steels varying in yield strengths from 262 to 824N/mm2, were used to make the specimens with longitudinal attachments; the specimens with transverse attachments were made only in structural steel. In all cases the fatigue strengths of the joints were improved by controlled shot peening. In both types of specimen similar results were obtained for the two structural steels although the degree of improvement was greater in the specimens with transverse attachments. The specimens with longitudinal attachments made from the two low alloy steels gave similar results and as anticipated the degree of improvement was greater than that obtained from specimens made from the lower strength structural steels.