Abstract
The fatigue life of welded joints is associated with crack initiation and propagation life. Theses cannot be easily separated, since the definition of crack initiation is vague due to the initiation of multiple cracks that are distributed randomly along the weld toes. In this paper a method involving a notch strain and fracture mechanical approach, which considers the characteristics of welded joints, e.g. welding residual stress and statistical characteristics of multiple cracks, is proposed, in an attempt to reasonably estimate these fatigue lives. The fatigue crack initiation life was evaluated statistically, e.g. the probability of failure occurrence in 2.3, 50 and $97.7\%$, in which the cyclic response of the local stress/strain hi the vicinity of the weld toes and notch factors derived by the irregular shape of the weld bead are taken into account. The fatigue crack propagation life was simulated by using Monte-Carlo method in consideration of the Ad-factor and the mechanical behavior of mutual interaction/coalescence between two adjacent cracks. The estimated total fatigue life, $(N_T)_{P50\%}$, as a sum of crack initiation and propagation life under the probability of failure occurrence in $50\%$ showed a good agreement with the experimental results. The developed technique for fatigue lift estimation enables to provide a quantitative proportion of crack initiation and propagation life in the total fatigue life due to the nominal stress range, ${\Delta}S$.
