This thesis discusses the design, development, technical implementation and fatigue assessment of a welded chipping drum as it is used in a high-speed, mobile wood chipper. The chipping drum is a dynamically highly-loaded, safety-critical component which has to be optimized already during design stage. The drums are equipped with cutting tools, which are subjected to complex tribo-mechanical requirements. The main objective is to develop a chipper drum for universal cutting applications supporting both established operating parameters and user-defined enhanced requirements. During operation, the drum is supposed to withstand the relatively harsh environmental conditions and the high local structural stresses during its designated operation for defined period of usage between service intervals. The work surveys methods of wood reconditioning and the use of wood as an alternative fuel are presented. Furthermore, the process of wood chipping and the associated cutting forces and influence factors are discussed. In addition, the fatigue strength assessment of weldments using structural stresses a is provided. Within an iterative process, design concepts of the chipping drum are developed and evaluated regarding technical operating conditions. The construction variants of each solution were assessed by a numerical structural stress analysis, whereat the occurring local stresses were included for an optimization of the designed structures. Based on these findings, the most technical-(economical) suitable concept was selected and the initial construction was further adjusted to operational demands including assembly and maintenance. Finally, on the basis of the numerically supported design work, an optimized variant of the investigated high-speed chipping drum is obtained which fulfills the quite high service demands efficiently.