The fracture behaviour of a welded tubular joint—an ESIS TC1.3 round robin on failure assessment methods: Part VI: application of WES 2805-1997

The Japanese flaw assessment method WES 2805-1997 is applied to the fracture tests on welded tubular T-joints presented in Engineering Fracture Mechanics (2002;69). The approach is shown to yield conservative results for small amounts of stable crack growth but it overestimates the load carrying capacity for larger amounts of stable crack growth. As a consequence it is proposed to restrict the application to ductile crack initiation and to brittle fracture below or at stable crack initiation.