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This paper is concerned with the problem of prediction of the total life of an engineering structure based on the fatigue crack growth model. The life of an engineering component is generally modeled as a combination of the time required for a crack to initiate and then the time required for crack to propagate till the final fracture. Unfortunately the crack initiation size is a vaguely defined parameter. In order to overcome this ambiguity it is proposed to model the total life of an engineering structure by using the UniGrow fatigue crack growth model with assumption of the intrinsic material parameter ρ* as an initial crack size. The method to overcome the small crack problem in fatigue crack modeling is presented as well. The proposed model was successfully used to predict fatigue lives of misaligned cruciform welded joints under a constant amplitude loading. Results from the analysis and experiment are in a good agreement.