Fatigue assessment of welds joining corrugated steel webs to flange plates

•The fatigue strength of welded joints in the corrugated steel web beams is evaluated.•The effect of transition curvature on the fatigue failure of the joints is identified.•The interaction of feature parameters on the joint stress concentration is analyzed.•An analytical approach for combined stresses is proposed to assess such joints.

This paper presents an analytical approach for the fatigue assessment of welds joining corrugated plates to flange plates. The failure mode, stress distribution and fatigue strength of such welded joints have been examined through experimental tests and finite element analyses. As the stress concentration at the external weld line of the transition curvature is very critical for the fatigue life assessment, the study of such geometric effect has been performed and its resultant stress characteristics are discussed. The results show that, for the stress concentration at the fatigue critical point of the transition curvature, the influence of the corrugation/curvature angle is more significant when the ratio of the curvature radius to the corrugation depth is smaller, and vice-versa. The S–N curve of referred cruciform joint details can be regarded as the lower bound in contrast to the fatigue strength of welded joints with varying corrugation angle. Allowing for the combined stress condition, the proposed analytical approach is demonstrated to be appropriate for the fatigue assessment of the welded joint with the corrugated plate. The consideration of residual stress in the proposed analytical model is also discussed in theory.