The Effectiveness of Design Procedures for Fatigue Design of Welds

Abstract

This paper examines the link between the design codes, good design and the prevention of field failures. There are many design codes for the fatigue design of welds. They contain many differences influenced by the history of particular industries. Engineering may not be well served by these codes since on one hand they are normally conservative, thus creating excessively heavy structures. On the other hand the design codes often do not include the most important factors in the life expectancy of a weld namely the weld procedure, the quality of the weld and environmental effects. The paper concludes that a thorough review and unification of the industry design codes is overdue. The issue of manufacture of welds has to be put at the centre of the consideration of fatigue design.