A novel procedure for damage evaluation of fillet-welded joints

In the present paper, a novel procedure for fatigue resistance assessment of fillet-welded joints under complex random loading is proposed. It consists of two consecutive steps: (1) computation of the stress tensor at the verification point; (2) evaluation of damage and, consequently, fatigue life. The procedure exploits the multiaxial critical plane-based criterion by Carpinteri et al. for random loading. A case study, represented by a mechanical component of an arm sprayer used in agriculture, is examined in order to assess such a procedure. A comparison between experimental and numerical results in terms of crack nucleation location is performed.