Figure 1: Equivalent Stress of White Paper Model There are many software out there now that does weld analysis. Among others... For fatigue type analysis, there are: FE-Safe (Verity Method) & Ncode (Volvo Method) For static type analysis, there are: FEWeld & EDRMedeso A good reference classic book is Blodgett's Design of Welded Structures (1966). This book is a real gem even though it's quite old. Here is a short write-up by the same author et al with similar material: Welded Connections . White Paper Figure 2: Weaver's White Paper Comparing FEA to Hand Calculations I came across this really good white paper by Weaver Engineering that had a worked example comparing both hand calculation to their software along with in depth discussions. The example was detailed enough to be replicated. This is a great stepping stone when following the crawl-walk-run philosophy. The rest of the post seeks to replicate the results in the white paper. Model and