Abstract
Weld joints are most commonly used as a permanent joining method in engineering. They are popular due to their vast application in the industry and hence it is important to understand their behavior under vibration loading. Though there are regulations, standards and basic calculations which help designers in selecting types of welds to be used in the assembly. Typically, these can only aid in determining the safety factor in the design under static loading. It is also seen that analytical calculations take care of basic failure modes, but for other critical modes calculations become complex. Since vibration is a dynamic phenomenon, special approaches are required to deal with these complexities. To tackle these loading situations, there is dire need of simulation strategy to arrive at the design solutions. The objective of this study is to apply, compare and correlate the structural stress theory and nominal stress theory of weld fatigue with actual failures which will aid in analyzing welded structures for better fatigue life estimations. In this paper, structural stress theory and nominal stress theory have been implemented to compute the number of cycles for failure of two different structures with varying applications under the prescribed vibration loading.