GTAW WLD 150 Welding and Joining Practice Test 2026 – The Comprehensive All-in-One Guide to Mastering Your Exam!

The notch effect describes how sharp notches in a weld area act as stress concentrators, lowering the material’s toughness and making fracture more likely at those points. In welding, weld toes, roots, or other sharp geometries create localized stress that can initiate cracks under load or impact, so this term specifically captures that behavior. The other terms refer to different weld defects or phenomena—arc strike is superficial overheating, crater crack is a crack at the end of a weld bead, and porosity is gas pockets in the weld—so they don’t describe the stress-concentration concept at notches.