The study of characterizing the stress concentration effects at welds is one of the most important research directions for predicting the fatigue life of welded components. Stress solutions at the weld toe obtained from conventional meshfree methods are strongly influenced by parameters used in the methods as a result of stress singularity. In this study, an improved 2D meshfree radial point interpolation method (RPIM) is proposed for stress concentration evaluation of a welded component. The stress solutions are insensitive to parameters used in the improved RPIM. The improved RPIM-based scheme for consistently calculating stress concentration factor (SCF) and stress intensity factor at weld toe are presented. Our studies provide a novel approach to apply global weak-form meshfree methods in consistently computing SCFs and stress intensity factors at welds.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.