Improving the method of calculation of sizes of corner cut seams

Welded constructions are becoming more reliable and durable and they are required to have less metal content in them. It concerns mostly joints with corner cut seams because more than 70 % of welding materials go to corner cut seams. According to the building regulations II-23-81* a standard method of calculating the strength of welded joints with corner cut seems is performed for the symbol cut on the minimum cross section of the weld. The size of the minimum cross section is determined depending on the size of the weld leg and the regulatory coefficient β, which, in its turn, depends on the welding method. It should be noted, that building regulations do not fully take into account the possibility of increasing the size of the estimated cross section while performing the corner cut seams by mechanical methods. In particular, adjusting the position of the zone of penetration of the corner cut seam relative to the jointing plane of welded sheets by performing not equal weld leg corner cut seams it is possible to significantly increase the length of the calculated cross section. Moreover, it is possible to increase the depth of penetration of the t-joint wall for a given welding mode. The paper considers the question of determining the height of the corner cut seam depending on the welding mode, but it doesn’t take into account the determination of the size of the minimum cross-section and the depth of penetration of the wall. An attempt was made to improve the method for calculating the sizes of corner cut seams. The method is based on the experimentally confirmed assumptions: the area of penetration of the corner cut seam is described by the equation of ellipse; the cross-sectional area of the joint, regardless of its position to the jointing plane of welded sheets, remains constant at a given welding mode. The proposed method allows optimizing the geometry of corner cut seams, which in its turn allows reducing the size and consumption of welding materials used to perform corner cut seams without decreasing structural strength.