Improving Fatigue Strength
Reduce stress concentration
- flush machining in butt welds (100% improvement)
- toe grinding in fillet welds (80% improvement)
- melt smoothing with TIG torch (140% improvement)
Introduce compressive stresses
- shot or grit blasting (25-100% improvement)
- peening (80% improvement)
- spot heating in region adjacent to the weld (200% improvement - very difficult to control in practice)
- overloading - plastic deformation relaxes residual stresses (50% improvement)