The objective was to determine the susceptibility, of candidate steel and associated weldments on tension leg platforms (TLP) tendons to ripple-load cracking effect on stress-corrosion cracking in salt water. The project used parameters relevant to offshore applications--including those of stress ration, temperature and frequency. Also, the project acquired the data necessary for stress-corrosion cracking and corrosion-fatigue to implement a new theoretical model developed to make predictions of the ripple-load degradation in 3.5 percent NaCl Aqueous solution for TLP tendon steel, its weldments and heat-affected zone. The project also examined the resistance to ripple-load cracking in terms of the threshold level below which ripple-load cracking will not occur, as well as numerical integrations of time-to-failure curves for specific combination of material/structure and loading conditions. This project is an adjunct study to Project No. 63 completed in FY 1987.
Completed