Fatigue lifetime assessment of weld ends with idealized or real geometry in steel joints for off-road vehicles using the Peak Stress Method.

• Few fatigue analyses exist on weld extremities using local approaches. • A welded pipe penetrating a plate by means of intermittent fillet welds was tested. • Both idealized and real geometries of the welds were considered in FE models. • The Peak Stress Method was applied to assess the fatigue strength of the joints. The Notch Stress Intensity Factors (NSIFs) for the fatigue analysis of welded structures can be rapidly estimated by FEM by applying the Peak Stress Method (PSM). Two steel welded joint geometries adopted for off-road vehicles and containing four intermittent fillet welds were tested under uniaxial loading. To apply the PSM, an idealized as well as the real 3D scanned geometry of the weld ends were implemented in the numerical analyses. The PSM properly anticipated where cracks initiated and estimated the fatigue lives in fairly good agreement with the outcomes of the fatigue tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]