International Journal of Fatigue 31 (2009) 1

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International Journal of Fatigue

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfatigue

Editorial

Special issue on Fatigue of Welded Connections

In light of the important role played by weldments in applica- of such an important problem of practical interest, but also to
tions of practical interest, since about the middle of the last century industrial engineers interested in a view of the state of the art.
researchers have made a big effort in order to provide structural
engineers with accurate methods suitable for designing welded Luca Susmel
components against fatigue. In particular, the state of the art shows Department of Engineering,
that such a problem has been systematically investigated not only University of Ferrara,
to propose reliable fatigue life estimation techniques but also to Via Saragat, 1 44100 Ferrara,
evaluate the influence of different technological and metallurgical Italy
aspects on the overall fatigue strength of weldments. Tel.: +39 0532 974984; fax: +39 0532 974870
Due to the importance of such a topic, a special symposium on E-mail address: ssl@unife.it
‘‘Fatigue Assessment of Welded Structures” was organised in the
Roberto Tovo
ambit of the 6th International Conference on Fracture and Damage
University of Ferrara,
Mechanics, FDM 2007, which was held in Madeira, Portugal, from
Italy
the 17th till the 19th of July 2007. The high level of the given talks
suggested us releasing a special issue of International Journal of Fa- Paolo Livieri
tigue to collect the extended and revised version of a number of pa- University of Ferrara,
pers selected from those presented at such a special symposium. Italy
Further, in order to give a more exhaustive overview of the new Ferri M.H. Aliabadi
trends in this particular field of the structural integrity discipline, Imperial College,
several researchers who gave a pivotal contribution to our under- London, UK
standing of the weldment response to fatigue were invited to submit
a paper. Available online 4 June 2008
We do believe that the present special issue can be of interest
not only to academic researchers working on the theoretical basis

0142-1123/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2008.05.021