Issue 41

M. Vormwald et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 41 (2017) 114-122; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.41.16 120 parameter. According to the Findley criterion [11], the critical plane has to be searched depending on both the shear stress range   and maximal value of the normal stress   ,max , see Fig. 10. The parameter k in the given formula is a material parameter and was set to 0.2 for steel structures. FE-calculations were performed for different moment-to-force ratios. For each node at the critical surface, see Fig. 8, three stress components,  xx ,  yy and  xy were determined. The angles  and  were varied at each node, in order to determine the maximum value of the damage parameter f at the critical surface. The resulting interaction lines for proportional and non-proportional loading cases are depicted in Fig. 11. Such purely numerically obtained interaction lines can be assessed only in their shapes. Therefore, the axial force and torsional moment amplitudes were normalised using the pure axial force and pure torsional moment results.                            xx yy xx yy xy 2 sin · cos 2 sin 2 2 2         u v 2 2                       xx yy u xy sin · sin 2 cos 2 2                                xx yy xx yy v xy sin ·cos · cos 2 sin 2 2 2 Figure 9 : Illustration of the stress components   ,   u and   v Findley parameter f :            k f ,max max Δ · 2 Figure 10 : Determination of the shear stress range   and Findley parameter f. C ONCLUSIONS n all the tested specimens, fatigue cracks were initiated at the transition zone between weld toe and weld root. Using an idealised weld end model, the critical surface was rounded by r = 0.05 mm, in order to calculate equivalent stresses at the failure-critical location. The critical plane approach according to Findley was used, in order to determine interaction lines for proportional and non-proportional loading. In the case of non-proportional loading the interaction lines reveal a nearly complete decoupling. This result is in contrast of the experimental finding, especially for the non- I