collapse analysis) is not so evident. Therefore, it is necessary to
establish some arbitrary variations in such loads and perform
the analysis shown above. To this end, all calculations were
repeated considering a 10% increase in the applied loads and also
a 10% reduction in them. Tables 10 and 11 show the maximum
tolerable defects obtained for the two new hypotheses of the
applied loads. Again, the values in bold characters correspond to
situations limited by the fatigue threshold (2amax = 2ath ), those
in italics are limited by crack propagation (being 2amax > 2ath )
and the underlined values are particular cases dominated by the
fracture–plastic collapse of the section.