A concept to calculate the fatigue life strength of laser welds based on the fictive notch stress approach

The laser welding process of high loaded components is a widely-used low-cost and innovative production technology. Components such as valves for fuel injection systems with a lot of single laser weldings are produced. Most of the laser weldings owns a joint gap formed like a crack. The derived concept to calculate the fatigue strength and the allowable stress is based on components loaded by internal pressure. The concept was expanded on mechanically loaded components. In a first step the mean stress influence on the fatigue strength was tested. By using FE calculations the influence of idealised closed pores on the local stress at the fictive notch and the fatigue strength was investigated. © Carl Hanser Verlag.