Influence of brazing process and gap size on the fatigue strength of shear and peel specimen

Brazing is a joining technique used in many industries for components that consist of many individual parts. Many of these components are cyclically loaded during service. For this reason, reliable approaches to assess the service life must be developed. For this purpose, it is necessary to gain knowledge about factors influencing the fatigue strength and the damage behavior. In this paper induction, vacuum- and continuous furnace brazed shear and peel specimen with different brazing gap widths are analyzed. Therefore, the specimens were characterized, measuring the geometry of the specimens and surface condition of the brazing radii, and tested under load control using constant amplitudes. It is found that the manufacturing process and the parameters used have a significant influence on the mechanical properties of the brazing material, the surface condition and the profile of the fillet radii. These properties have again an influence on the damage behavior and the fatigue strength. In particular crack-like defects of varying severity, which can extend deep into the brazing material, that are located in highly stressed areas of the fillet radii have a significant influence on the fatigue strength. It is also found that, regardless of the brazing process used, there is a tendency in the area of the brazing gap width for the number and size of defects to increase with increasing gap size, which can negatively affect fatigue strength depending on the damage behavior.