Fatigue Life Analyses of Welded Structures

Avoiding or controlling fatigue damage is a major issue in the design and inspection of welded structures subjected to dynamic loading. Life predictions are usually used for safe life analysis, i.e. for verifying that it is very unlikely that fatigue damage will occur during the target service life of a structure. Damage tolerance analysis is used for predicting the behavior of a fatigue crack and for planning of in-service scheduled inspections. It should be a high probability that any cracks appearing are detected and repaired before they become critical. In both safe life analysis and the damage tolerance analysis there may be large uncertainties involved that have to …