Development of an automated quality assurance approach for welded joints

A more economical and resource‐saving construction of offshore wind energy converters is necessary in order to achieve climate policy objectives. Automated quality assurance of welded joints offers a great potential to enable less conservative manufacturing of the support structures. The main objective of this study is to find a correlation between the parameters that describe the weld geometry and the fatigue life. Butt welded specimens were scanned with a laser line sensor. The weld seam parameters including notch radius and flank angle were evaluated and the stress concentration factors in the notch were determined considering the microstructural support effect. A series of constant amplitude fatigue tests was conducted in order to evaluate S‐N‐curves according to nominal stress approach and notch stress approach. The fatigue results show a good correlation between notch stresses and fatigue life, demonstrating the great potential of the quality assurance approach for evaluating the weld seam geometries.