Weld joints play a very important role in the assessment of structural integrity of steel structures. The likelihood of defects is significantly higher in the weld joint compared to the unaffected base material. Here the Computational Welding Mechanics platform developed by Lindström (2015) has been used to model representative residual stress fields by the use of the IIW RSDP Phase II Initiative documentation (Janosch 2001). Where the CWM-platform includes an option for tracking the welding’s influences on the evolution of the base and weld material’s tensile properties. A detectable defect is introduced in the weld metal and the crack driving force in terms of the CTOD is extracted from the FEA. The loading applied covers both globally elastic and fully plastic conditions. The analysis allows evaluation of the influence of both residual stresses and changes in the tensile properties on the crack driving force as a function of applied global load.