The low stress design of welded plates using the self-designing structures approach

For cover plates welded to base plates, we show that by linking together finite element adaptive techniques, error estimators and stress trajectories, together with our self-designing structures software, we can design a weldment to obtain the minimum stresses in the base plate, the cover plate and the weld. In this way, a specified fatigue life can be obtained. We believe that such a method will produce more efficient design solutions than those derived by traditional approaches.