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What is Vibration Induced Fatigue?

Vibration Induced Fatigue failures occur due to the progressive growth of fatigue cracks in welded connections due to fatigue mechanism. This occurs when normal operational pipework vibration is sufficient to cause large numbers of cycles of stress in the welds, such as the connections between small bore branches and main lines, which over time, cause fatigue cracks to initiate and propagate through the thickness of the pipe wall or weld metal.

Failure occurs weeks, months or often years later, when the fatigue crack grows fully through-wall, resulting in a leak, often during an extreme event such as a pipe surge or pressure spike.

​​Consequently, engineers often mistakenly say that the pipe has ‘suddenly’ failed due to a fatigue failure whereas in reality, the failure has been progressing undetected for a long time.