🔍 Key Concepts

• Joint efficiency (effectiveness) in plate and shell calculations • How welding compares to riveting or bolting in terms of strength loss at the joint • Whether a joint can be designed to be stronger than the solid plate itself

💭 Think About

• First, compare a welded joint to an uncut, continuous plate: should its effectiveness be less than, equal to, or greater than that of the solid plate? • Think about whether any real joint can legitimately have an efficiency number greater than 1.0 and what that would mean physically. • Consider how older riveted joints were treated in design formulas versus modern fully welded joints—does welding reduce or nearly restore the plate’s full strength?

✅ Before You Answer

• Eliminate any value of effectiveness that would imply a joint is stronger than solid plate without a joint. • Consider typical design practice: riveted joints use efficiencies well below 1; fully welded joints are often taken closer to what baseline value? • Check whether an effectiveness as low as 0.48 is realistic for a properly designed welded seam compared to riveted connections.