Fatigue assessment of web-stiffened corners in plated structures by local approaches

This paper deals with the fatigue assessment of three ship structural details. While local approaches, which are proposed in relevant literature and which nowadays are also widely applied in design practice, can successfully assess the fatigue strength of several welded joints, web-stiffened complex geometries show peculiar features, needing to bias the results of local approaches. Hence, even recent rule requirements need to include correction factors to account for such deviations. The present study identifies effects, which alter particularly the crack propagation behaviour. Some test cases were re-evaluated using approaches referring to the effective notch stress and to the strain energy density. Results are compared with the test results in order to provide explanations to the above-mentioned biased assessments.