To estimate fatigue crack propagation life for the representative welding details, i.e. non-load carrying cruciform, cover plate and longitudinal stiffener joint, the stress intensity factors at the front of the surface cracks have to be calculated, w...
To estimate fatigue crack propagation life for the representative welding details, i.e. non-load carrying cruciform, cover plate and longitudinal stiffener joint, the stress intensity factors at the front of the surface cracks have to be calculated, which are influenced strongly by the geometry of attachments, weld toes and the crack shapes. However, it is difficult to obtain the stress intensity factors of the multiple surface cracks located in vicinity of the weld toe due to their geometrical complexity. For the effective calculation of the stress intensity factors the M<SUB>k</SUB>-factor was introduced which can be derived by a parametric study performed by FEM considering influence of the geometrical effects. The fatigue life of the welding details was estimated through considering the mechanisms of mutual interaction and coalescence of multiple collinear surface cracks distributed randomly along the weld toe. The estimated results for the fatigue life had a good agreement with that of experiment.