1999 Volume 17 Issue 1 Pages 94-101
Load carrying fillet welded cruciform joints have two fatigue crack initiating points. They are weld toes and weld roots at which high stress concentrations occur. Which of the two is to be the initiating point depends on weld size, plate thickness and weld penetration, and this mechanism can be easily understood. Some experimental results indicated that fatigue crack originating point was also influenced by the magnitude of stress range. The reason for this phenomenon, however, is not clear yet. In this study, in order to make clear the reason, fatigue tests on the welded joint specimens, analyses of welding residual stresses with the aid of the thermo-elastic-plastic finite element method and fatigue crack propagation analyses in considera-tion of the residual stresses are carried out.
