Fracture Assessments of Welded Structures

Weldments are particularly susceptible to fracture due to defects, material property variations, and residual stresses created during the welding process. It is common in fracture assessments of welded structures to ignore these features; defects are often idealized to be crack-like, weld properties to be homogeneous, and residual stresses to be uniaxial and tensile or nonexistent. This paper presents an overview of several recent studies that examined the ability to accurately model fracture in welds that possess realistic flaws, inhomogeneous material properties, and residual stresses.