Effective notch stress and critical distance method to estimate the fatigue life of T and overlap friction stir welded joints

The interface notch is a general characteristic of friction stir welded joints and appears in many types of the welds. Indeed interface notch most likely is a location that fatigue failure can occur there. This paper is concerned with the fatigue of friction stir welded joints. In the present paper fatigue of T and over lap joints were modelled base on critical distance method. Two material properties ΔKth, the fatigue threshold stress intensity factor and Δσ0, the fatigue limit were used in order for estimating the fatigue life at interface location. This is shown that assuming homogeneous material throughout the weld and the base material in FE analysis still can provide a reasonable fatigue prediction for friction stir joints when using critical distance method. This suggests the same procedure can be used for complex component when failure appears in the interface notch. In order to verify it the critical distance prediction method was also used for actual component where the failure occurred in the weld. The predicted fatigue limit deviated only 15% from the experimental result.