Stainless steel possesses outstanding advantages such as good corrosion resistance and long service life. Stainless steel is one of the primary materials used for sustainable structures, and welding is one of the main connection modes of stainless-steel bridges and other structures. Therefore, fatigue damage at welded joints deserves attention. The existing fatigue design codes of stainless-steel structures mainly adopt the design philosophy of structural steel. In order to comprehensively review the published fatigue test data of welded joints in stainless steel, in this paper, the fatigue test data of representative welded joints of stainless steel were summarized comprehensively and the S–N curves of six representative stainless-steel welded joints were obtained by statistical evaluation. The comparison of the fatigue strength from existing design codes and fatigue test data was performed, and the results showed that the fatigue strength of welded joints of stainless steel was higher than that of structural-steel welded joints. The flexibility of regression analysis with and without a fixed negative inverse slope was discussed based on the scatter index. It was found that the fatigue test data of stainless-steel welded joints are more consistent with the S–N curve regressed by a free negative inverse slope. In this paper, a design proposal for the fatigue strength of representative welded joints of stainless steel is presented based on the S–N curve regressed by the free negative inverse slope.

For this paper, full-scale/model test comparisons to validate the traditional atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) wind-tunnel simulation technique performed until now by the wind engineering community are systematically reviewed. The engineering background includes some benchmark low-rise buildings specifically established for use in wind engineering research (the Aylesbury experimental buildings, the Texas Tech University experimental building, the Silsoe buildings, etc.), several high-rise buildings in North America and East Asia, long-span bridges, large-span structures, and cooling towers. These structures are of different geometries, are located in different wind environments, and are equipped with various transducers and anemometers. By summarizing the different articles in the literature, it is evident that notable discrepancies between the full-scale measurement and the model test results were observed in most full-scale/model test comparisons, which usually took certain forms: the mean and/or the peak negative pressures at the flow separation regions on buildings were underestimated in the wind tunnel; differences in the root-mean-square (rms) values of the acceleration samples between the full-scale measurements and the force balance model tests were non-negligible; the vertical vortex-induced vibration amplitudes of bridges measured using section models and aero-elastic models were much lower than those observed on the prototypes, etc. Most scholars subjectively inferred that inherent technical issues with the ABL wind tunnel simulation technique could be responsible for the observed full-scale/model test discrepancies, including the Reynolds number effects, the turbulent flow characteristics effects, and the non-stationarity effects. However, based on the authors’ years of experience and after discussion with experienced researchers, it was found that some of the full-scale measurements performed in earlier research were inherently less accurate and deterministic than the wind tunnel experiments they were supposed to validate, which could also be a significant cause of the full-scale/model test discrepancies observed. It is suggested herein that future studies in this field should regard full-scale measurements only as benchmarks, and that future works should focus on synthesizing the results from different schools of physical experiments and formulating universal empirical models of high theoretical significance to properly validate future wind tunnel tests.

Welded joints are prone to fatigue cracking with the existence of welding defects and bending stress. Fracture mechanics is a useful approach in which the fatigue life of the welded joint can be predicted. The key challenge of such predictions using fracture mechanics is how to accurately calculate the stress intensity factor (SIF). An empirical formula for calculating the SIF of welded joints under bending stress was developed by Baik, Yamada and Ishikawa based on the hybrid method. However, when calculating the SIF of a semi-elliptical crack, this study found that the accuracy of the Baik-Yamada formula was poor when comparing the benchmark results, experimental data and numerical results. The reasons for the reduced accuracy of the Baik-Yamada formula were identified and discussed in this paper. Furthermore, a new correction factor was developed and added to the Baik-Yamada formula by using theoretical analysis and numerical regression. Finally, the predictions using the modified Baik-Yamada formula were compared with the benchmark results, experimental data and numerical results. It was found that the accuracy of the modified Baik-Yamada formula was greatly improved. Therefore, it is proposed that this modified formula is used to conveniently and accurately calculate the SIF of semi-elliptical cracks in welded joints under bending stress.

The high variability in turbulence is a significant feature of the realistic atmospheric boundary layer winds which might have strong effects on wind loads on structures submerged in atmospheric boundary layer. This article has been devoted to this matter of science which is of practical importance to wind-engineering design and research. First, the variation of the turbulence intensity of the atmospheric boundary layer flow has been studied using theoretical calculations and meteorological wind measurements. Second, the effects of free-stream turbulence on wind loads on circular cylindrical structures have been revealed at high Reynolds number and equivalent conditions based on field measurements and wind tunnel model tests for wind effects on a large cooling tower. Through these works, it is found that the turbulence intensity for the measured atmospheric boundary layer winds is highly variable due to the significant effect of the mean wind speed, which is not well represented by the traditional empirical formulae. Besides, the free-stream turbulence significantly influences the dynamic characteristics of wind effects on the cooling tower in most cases, and the wind effects for a flow field of high turbulence intensity are generally more unfavorable than those for a flow field of low turbulence intensity.

Material anisotropy for tension and compression is a significant characteristic of austenitic stainless steel compared to carbon steel. Due to limitations during the testing of the restrained jig, the maximum strain value of compressive experiments of austenitic stainless steel is around 2%. This value cannot satisfy the requirements of accurate finite simulation on austenitic stainless steel columns and beams in the high compressive strain range. In this study, a new type of compressive specimen that satisfies the high compressive strain test was designed. The stress-strain response of austenitic stainless steel S30403 (JISCO, Gansu, China) was investigated in the high compressive strain range up to 10%, and constitutive models were compared with the experimental data. It was found that the new type specimen with length-to-diameter ratio of 1:1 can reliably obtain the stress-strain response of austenitic stainless steel S30403 in the high compressive strain range. It was found that the material anisotropy of austenitic stainless steel S30403 is remarkable in the high compressive strain range up to 10%. The strain-hardening curve of the austenitic stainless steel S30403 can be represented by a straight line in the high compressive strain range. Our study also found that the Quach constitutive model accurately describes the two-stage strain-hardening phenomenon in the high compressive strain range up to 10%.