Numerical Simulation of the Fatigue Life of Corroded Steel Plates

Abstract

Ten pairs of corroded steel plate specimens were obtained through an artificial accelerated corrosion procedure, and their 3D surface morphologies were measured by a noncontact profiler. A method for reconstructing a geometric model of the corroded surface was proposed and employed to conduct tensile simulations. Fatigue life prediction of the corroded steel plates was realized based on the nominal stress method. The results show that the stress concentration near pits led to a significant decrease in the fatigue life of the steel plates. In the early stage of corrosion, acicular pits were densely distributed on the surface of the steel plate, but in the later stage of corrosion, the fusion of the corrosion pits caused the radius to increase. Consequently, the fatigue life of corroded steel also showed a trend of first declining and then increasing with the corrosion time. The error between the predicted fatigue life of the corroded steel plate and the experimental results was within 15%, which verifies the validity of the proposed method.