Reliability Assessment by Factor of Safety on the Tensile Failure Behaviour on Military Grade Armour Steel Weldment

Welding armour steel plate is a crucial task in the construction of combat vehicle structures. The shield metal arc welding (SMAW) with austenitic stainless steel (ASS) filler is used to prepare the defect free weld joints under suitable welding parameters. Tensile property enhancement in the fusion zone of the weld joint inhibits bullet penetration in a combat environment. An examination has also been conducted into the effect of microstructures in base metal, weldments, and the influence on tensile fractured surfaces. Tensile failure occurs in the weld centreline due to the reduced tensile strength of the filler material. When compared to the relevant literature, these welds demonstrated 48% joint efficiency and good tensile strength. This present work was development of a finite element analysis (FEA) model to analyse the tensile failure of base metal and weld joints with different factors of safety (FOS) such as FOS 0, FOS 1.5, and FOS 3. The FEA was carried out to predict the load-carrying capacity under tensile load. The simulation and experimental findings concur, implying that the suggested approaches were utilized effectively for structural analysis of armour weld joint using typical FEA techniques. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.