Fatigue strength of aluminium welded joints by a non-local approach

In this paper, the numerical implicit gradient approach already validated for steel welded joints is also used for aluminium joints. Some peculiarities of aluminium joints are discussed and a general fatigue scatter band for arc welded joints has been proposed. The analysed experimental data taken from the literature range from the simple butt-welded joints with a thickness of 2 mm up to the extruded I-beam with a length of about 2 m. The obtained SN behaviour has an inverse slope of 3.7 and, at high cycle fatigue, the strength is about half that of steel joints