Round robin on local stress evaluation for fatigue by various FEM software

The objective of this Round Robin is to assess the software influence on the structural/local stress values as determined by means of various methods. In particular the influence of (a) FEM software solver, (b) potentially software-depending element characteristics (e.g. exact shape functions) and (c) software-depending post processing procedures (e.g. extrapolation from integration points and stress averaging methods. Two different typical problems are studied, one 2D geometry and one 3D geometry, using FE models with various element types and varying mesh finesse. For each of the models, the participants receive files with node coordinates and element numbering, in order to eliminate variations in mesh geometry. Results calculated by the Round Robin participants using various software are reported for structural/local stress values defined according to the following methods: hot-spot, Xiao and Yamada, Dong, Haibach, critical distance and equivalent notch stress. Eventually, these two problems could be proposed as benchmark examples for use by engineers how are not familiar with these methods in the validation of FE modeling procedures aiming at structural/local stress evaluation