A fatigue crack initiation approach for naval welded joints

This work deals with the study of the fatigue behavior of welded joints of naval structures taking the residual stresses into account. Our approach is based on the study of the cyclic behavior of the base metal in order to study the shakedown of a welded structure. Then, under the assumption of a fast elastic shakedown, applications on representative elements of naval structures are under investigation in order to evaluate the crack initiation life under complex loading, using a two scale damage model such as developed by Lemaitre et al.