Fatigue Lives of Multiple Flaws in Accordance With Combination Rule

When multiple flaws are detected in structural components, remaining lives of the components are estimated by fatigue flaw growth calculations using combination rules in fitness-for-service codes. ASME, BS7910 and FITNET Codes provide different combination rules. Fatigue flaw growth for adjacent surface flaws in a pipe subjected to cyclic tensile stress were obtained by numerical calculations using these different combination rules. In addition, fatigue lives taking into account interaction effect between the two flaws were conducted by extended finite element method (X-FEM). As the calculation results, it is found that the fatigue lives calculated by the X-FEM are close to those by the ASME Code. Finally, it is worth noticing that the combination rule provided by the ASME Code is appropriate for fatigue flaw growth calculations.