The Need for Fitness-For-Purpose in the Assessment of Weld Discontinuities

The use of fitness-for-purpose for the assessment of weld discontinuities has become well established in the offshore and other industries. For applications within the automotive industry it will not generally be cost-effective to perform fracture mechanics analyses to assess weld discontinuities detected during inspection on an individual basis. However, it is feasible to use the same techniques to set quality assurance levels for automotive structures. Acceptance levels for weld discontinuities may be established in a global analysis for the whole structure, taking into consideration the proximity of different types of weld detail and that the levels of cyclic stress will vary throughout the structure.