Fatigue Experiments for Welded Joints under Pseudo‐Narrowband Loads

Abstract

Sixteen welded steel specimens have been tested under variable amplitude loadings to determine the extent to which fatigue life is affected by the rate of amplitude variability of the loading process. It appears that rate of variation can significantly change the rate of fatigue damage. Comparisons have been made between the experimental results and commonly used analytical techniques such as the Rayleigh approximation and rainflow analysis. The experimental results are generally significantly lower than the predictions by either the Rayleigh approximation or the rainflow analysis. A new damage model is also hypothesized that gives predictions in very good agreement with the experimental results.