Fatigue assessment of welded joints - size effect and probabilistic approach

Plate thickness influences the fatigue performance of welded components. In fatigue design standards and recommendations, the thickness effect and fatigue strength reduction have been considered by modifying the S-N - N curve for plates thicker than a reference thickness. However, increasing fatigue strength due to the thinness effect is often disregarded. The current study focuses on the size effect in fatigue of butt welded and non-load carrying cruciform welded joints under constant amplitude tension load. Literature data is evaluated using the effective notch stress method with a reference radius of 1 mm, which is used for all finite element models to ensure that FAT-value corresponding to a 1 mm notch radius remains constant across all models. A probabilistic assessment of the results using the weakest-link theory is applied to improve the prediction accuracy of thinner members outside the recommended thickness range of the used radius. The method reduces the S-N - N data scatter in comparison to the variation of test data and shows applicability also for thinner members. A comparison of the size effect for the current method with extrapolated values from standards and recommendations shows a difference in the size effect for thinner members.