Fatigue initiation behaviour throughout friction stir welded joints in AA2024-T3

This paper presents the results of an experimental and numerical investigation on the fatigue crack initiation behaviour of friction stir welded joints in AA2024-T3. These welds exhibit a complex material behaviour. In this study the influence of the different weld zones on the fatigue crack initiation behaviour was investigated. Therefore, fatigue experiments were conducted on a variety of welded central notched specimen configurations. As a result, the fatigue initiation life as function of the location in and the orientation of the weld was obtained. Numerical analyses were performed to investigate the influence of residual stress and yield strength on the stresses at the notch.