Description Welding is a type of joining process which is widely used in automobile sectors, power plants, industries, etc. Welded joints in structural elements may contain defects like porosity, lack of penetration, undercut and lack of fusion, which can be treated as a flaw. Cracks may initiate due to high stress concentration from this flaw under cyclic loading conditions and starts growing. Welding standards proposes acceptable level of weld defects as it is practically inevitable to avoid weld defects. Key Objectives This research work will focus on the evaluation of fatigue life of welded structures in the presence of acceptable level of weld defects. The fatigue life of any component depends on many factors which includes the critical crack size that depends on the fracture toughness of the material and stress intensity factor solution. This particular study will investigate how the crack initiates due to cyclic plasticity evolution.