The structural integrity of butt fusion (BF) joints in thermoplastic pressure piping systems is critical to their long-term safe use. The tapered waist tensile (TWT) specimen was developed to alleviate issues associated with ISO 13953 waisted tensile (WT) specimen for evaluating BF joints. Experimental and finite element analyses were performed to obtain optimum TWT specimen designs for the BF joint destructive test. For TWT specimens, depending on the pipe size, the displacement at onset necking was reduced by 30~100%, and the tested BF area increased by 60~80% compared to the WT specimen. In addition, the transverse specimen deflection was lower thus providing better experimental stability. Furthermore, it showed the same BF displacement at the maximum force local to the BF bead, indicating that the tapered waist geometry provides equivalent deformation constraint and BF failure mode designed for the BF joint in the WT specimens. Therefore, TWT specimens offer simplicity, adaptability, stability, and accuracy in specimen preparation, testing, and analysis compared to WT specimens.
Keywords: butt fusion (BF) joints; fracture energy; polyethylene (PE) pipes; tapered waist tensile (TWT); waisted tensile (WT).