Analysis of fatigue test data to reassess EN 1993-1-9 detail categories

This paper addresses the assessment of fatigue details according to EN 1993-1-9, which form the basis of the most important fatigue verification, the nominal stress approach. First of all, a suitable statistical methodology had to be defined for consistent detail classification. A structured database on the MySQL platform serves as a basis for the evaluation of the detail categories. In addition to fatigue test data documented in the background document to EN 1993-1-9, this database also includes new test data provided by the authors. After selecting the most meaningful test data, important details, such as longitudinal welds, were reassessed. In addition, the authors carried out fatigue tests in connection with numerical simulations in order to be able to evaluate the fatigue strength with better accuracy. The results so far show that the details analysed often prove to have a higher fatigue strength than currently documented in EN 1993-1-9.