Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
(OP)
Hi,
Effective area of the fillet weld, according to AWS standard, is effective length x throat size and so for tubes, effective length should be pi x diameter. Can anyone confirm if I have to take only half of this area for shear stress calculation according to API RP 2A standard.
Thanks
Effective area of the fillet weld, according to AWS standard, is effective length x throat size and so for tubes, effective length should be pi x diameter. Can anyone confirm if I have to take only half of this area for shear stress calculation according to API RP 2A standard.
Thanks






RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
In your case, the shear area would be the leg height of the fillet (take the lower if different) x 0.707 (to account for the geometry of the throat) x the circumference of the outside diameter of the pipe. (slightly conservative since the length of weld is actually the circumference of the weld centerline around the pipe)
RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
Appreciate it! I know how to calculate weld area. I dont know if you are aware, according to API, shear area for tubular cross section is half of the cross section area, so my question is if we have to consider this for weld and consider only half of the calculated area like below:
Shear area of weld = pi x pipe OD x .707 x leg size / 2
RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
Your best bet is to refer to the document itself, as Ron noted.
If the document itself is not clear, you may be able to get an official interpretation through API. That is available for some API standards, but I don't know if it applies to every API document. It may take a couple of months. And the "Recommended Practice" documents may work differently than the regular standards.
In general, when asking questions here, if your question is something fairly mainstream, you will find quite a few knowledgeable people willing and able to help you. If it is something more obscure, you may or may not find anybody familiar with the topic. But being rude to people that attempt to help certainly won't encourage anyone else to contribute.
There is also a subforum here for "API Code Issues", but you may or may not find anyone there familiar with the document in question.
RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures
If you were welding a square HSS, you could make a similar case that the welds at the two "webs" should be the ones used in resisting the shear in the member.
For the round HSS, they're implying that only half of the section is useful for resisting shear. The AISC specification does the same thing. It would be reasonable to use only half of the fillet weld to resist shear.
RE: Effective area for fillet weld for tubular structures