Abstract
This work deals with the stress analysis of a longitudinally stiffened welded panel and evaluates the hot spot stress distributions and stress concentration factors that result from different types of imperfections. The hot spot stresses and the stress concentration factors are defined at locations adjacent to the transverse weld. Numerous calculations are performed representing realistic conditions of imperfections and various comparisons of hot spot stress distributions are presented. The stress concentration factor for the cases of pure thickness step changes and for vertical angular imperfections are fit to a quadratic polynomial function.