An XFEM based uncertainty study on crack growth in welded joints with defects

Decades of study on the fatigue of welded joints have shown that fatigue depends on many parameters such as initial defects, residual stresses and random loads, which are difficult for experiments to cover comprehensively, thus leading to scattered test results. Therefore, studies on uncertainties in the process of fatigue crack growth are required, especially for large-scale structures like orthotropic steel decks (OSDs). This paper presents an...