Review of fatigue data for welds improved by tungsten inert gas dressing

• 311 fatigue data points for welds improved by TIG dressing method are presented.
• A design slope of 4 is proposed based on the analyses of the fatigue data points.
• An increase in the fatigue strength is found based on the material yield strength.
• SN curves are proposed according to the steel grade and specimen geometry.
• The proposed SN curves are found to be conservative with respect to available data.

Experimental fatigue data points for the welds improved via the tungsten inert gas (TIG) dressing method have been extracted from the existing literature. The extracted fatigue data includes experimental points for longitudinal attachments, transverse non-load carrying welds, butt joints and T-joints. In total, 311 published test results for weld details with various yield strengths (272⩽fy⩽1100MPa) and stress ratios (-1⩽R⩽0.2-1⩽R⩽0.2) are presented and analysed. A step-wise increase in the fatigue strength based on the specimen geometry and the steel grade is proposed with an S–N   slope of m1=4m1=4. All of the fatigue data for constant amplitude loading are found to be in good agreement with respect to the proposed design curves.

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