Application of fatigue approaches on fillet welds of high strength steel

To calculate the fatigue behaviour of welded structures local fatigue approaches like the effective notch stress approach are used. This paper examines the application of the notch stress approach for thin‐walled specimens made of high‐strength steel. Focus is laid on the end‐of‐seam fatigue behaviour. To highlight the differences between welding of transversal stiffener and longitudinal gusset a coupled weld simulation was set‐up. The comparative results and measurements showed that the intersecting start and stop areas of the longitudinal gusset define the regions with highest residual stresses. The thin‐walled fatigue investigations showed that the notch stress approach supports the use of a single master SN‐curve both for continuous fillet welds and end‐of‐seams possessing a slope of three. The influence of the clamping condition can be minimized by using small reference radii. The observed corresponding fatigue ratio is not thoroughly satisfying and will be examined in detail in further work