Can anyone recommend an economical method of assessing the loads in fillet welds from an FE plate model but without explicitly requiring the welds to be modelled?  I have tried using nodal force outputs (in ABAQUS)as well as "unzipping" co-located joints at the nodes and connecting the nodes with springs.  But both methods can be laborious for large structures and I'm not always confident that I'm getting the right answers.

Say, for example, I have a structure where I know that the tee weld between a flange and a web is simply maintaining compatibility in global bending through complementary shear.  The easiest thing to do is to specify size the fillet weld that will develop the full strength of the plates that are being connected - but this is not necessarily economical or required. The weld does not have to be particularly large and could even be intermittent in this application.  (I know there is an analytical solution to this particular example but I'm thinking now about large complex structures that require FEA)  Any ideas?