Nordic Steel Construction Conference 2012 Hotel Bristol, Oslo, Norway 5-7 September 2012 Fatigue Assessment of Weld Terminations in Welded Cover-Plate Details; a Comparison of Local Approaches Mohsen Heshmati a , Mohammad Al-Emrani a , Bo Edlund a a Chalmers University of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Göteborg, Sweden Abstract: Local fatigue assessment approaches have drawn engineers’ attention since their advent. However, up to now, none of the available fatigue assessment codes has explicitly given instructions for assessing details with weld terminations using these approaches. In the present paper, the structural hot spot stress concept, according to different suggestions, as well as the effective notch stress method are reviewed and applied to cover-plate details, with and without transverse end weld. The predicted fatigue lives according to these methods are com- pared with each other and with a large set of fatigue test results. Eventually, based on the comparisons, recommendations for the assessment of weld terminations are given. 1 Introduction The profound developments of the computer technologies in the past few decades have led to the increasing application of computer based numerical methods. As a result, procedures for the application of new FE methods for fatigue assessment of welded details have been pro- posed in the literature [1-4]. Moreover, the advancements of welding techniques have resulted in more complex welded details, to which neither a nominal stress nor a design category can be assigned [5]. Therefore, local fatigue assessment approaches, which are based on the local characteristics of fatigue phenomenon, have increasingly adopted by fatigue design associa- tions [6,7]. As these methods are generally based on numerical methods such as the finite el- ement method, the modelling and calculation instructions have been progressively updated. However, up to now, none of the fatigue related codes and guidelines have explicitly given instructions for assessing the weld terminations using the local concepts. The stress distribution over the plate thickness in the vicinity of a weld toe is non-linear. This peculiarity of stress distribution in welded components is primarily attributed to two dis- tinct stress raising factors; macro-geometric stress raisers and weld notch effect. The Structur- al Hot Spot Stress (SHSS) disregards the notch effect caused by the weld profile and compris- es all other geometric variations at the crack initiation area (hot spot) [1,8]. The hot spot