Testing and analysis of fatigue behaviour in edge details: a comparative study using hot spot and structural stresses

At present, the fatigue design of welded structures is primarily based on a nominal stress or hot spot stress (HSS) approach with a series of classified weld S-N curves. Although well accepted by major industries, the nominal stress-based fatigue design approach is relatively cumbersome in terms of securing a series of S-N curves corresponding to each class of joint types and loading modes. Moreover, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to determine the nominal stress at each structural component, particularly in complex ship structures. The HSS-based fatigue design is based on the stress at the weld toes obtained by linear or quadratic extrapolation of stresses over two or three points in front of the weld toe. Finite-element analysis is mostly applied. However, this method has a difficulty of finding a proper stress through the global model, the medium size model and the detail model of ship structure. Besides, the calculated HSS values may vary depending on the extrapolation technique used. Recently, a mesh-size insensitive structural stress (SS) definition that gives a stress state at the weld toe with a relatively large mesh size has been proposed. The SS definition is based on the elementary structural mechanics theory and provides an effective measure of a stress state in front of the weld toe. As an experimental validation of the Battelle SS method in obtaining the fatigue strength of weldments, a series of experiments are carried out for various sizes of weldments. Based on the results from this study, it is expected to achieve the development of a more precise fatigue strength evaluation technique and saving on the time required in the fatigue design of ship and offshore structures.