2. Assemblies leaving a discontinuity at the root

2.1 Consequence of root discontinuity

The presence of a flat discontinuity at the root of a weld bead under load should, strictly speaking, give rise to a verification of the stability of this natural defect by means of fracture mechanics, involving the stress intensity factorsK _I , K _II , K _III at this location. As knowledge of these quantities is relatively complicated, in practice, the stability of the bead under load can be reduced to the assumption that the ductile state has been reached, given that :

• the modest thickness of the beads results in low tri-axiality of root stresses;

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