Fatigue tests of damaged tubes under flexural loading

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of the industrial application of steel tubes, the effect of collision on the surface of steel tubes subject to cyclic loading has largely remained untouched. This paper studies the fatigue behavior of steel tubes which are impacted by an external object. A dent imperfection caused by a collision was modeled and fatigue tests were conducted using a MTS machine. Fatigue life as well as the failure modes were thoroughly discussed in a way that the fatigue life of the dented tubes with similar geometrical specifications at full-scale can be generalized.