• fatigue
• multiaxial
• steel
• variable amplitude
• welding

Fatigue is one of the most common failure mechanisms of structural components.
Many fatigue failures have become popular throughout engineering history since
the tragic railroad accidents that motivated Wöhler to begin the first
investigations of the fatigue damage process. Since then a huge deal of work has
been carried out ot the subject by several generations of engineers leading to a
deeper comprehension of the complex phenomena related to the damages
occurring in structural components due to time varying loads. However, many
aspects of the subject remains unclear and several questions are still open for
discussion.
The present work tries to give an answer to some of those questions. In
particular, it is focused on the fatigue life assessment under multiaxial and
variable amplitude loads with regard to the application to welded joint
connections.
Fatigue is a classical topic in engineering design and a subject of wide
practical interest since it is one of the most common causes of failure for
structural components.