Blodgett Weld Sizing for Atypical Shapes

[m_ridzon]

I'm familiar with Blodgett and his method to treat welds as a line. And I have looked at his example weld shapes in his manual, of which there are roughly a dozen (image below). But they are all simple typical shapes.




My question is how to apply the method to atypical shapes. Below are a couple example images. If the curved yellow lines represent fillet welds, is there a way to use Blodgett to size them?

 

[XR250]

Size them based on the horizontal shear in the beam

 

[KootK]

It's difficult to answer this with confidence given that you've not supplied the loading on the welds. That said, I suspect that @XR250 has the right of this: it looks more like a horizontal shear problem than a rigid connection problem which is what the Blodgett stuff speaks to. The one exception might be bend areas. I'd recommend stiffeners there to keep things simple.

 

[TRAK.Structural]

A shear flow calculation should get you the required loading for the horizontal shear that others have pointed out.