Fatigue Life Estimation of Single Spot Weld: A finite element approach

Resistance spot welding remains an attractive method for joining sheet metals, especially in the automotive industry, using a high concentration of heat produced by a strongelectrical current followed by subsequent cooling. A typical car consists of around ۵۰۰۰ to ۸۰۰۰ spot welds. As vehicles are always under time-varying loads which lead to damage accumulation and crack initiation around the welded parts, the durability of spot welds needs special attention to optimize the design and reduce trial and error. In this work, the finite element model of single spot welded DC۰۴ steel under shear tensile test created using ABAQUS and fatigue life estimation occurred under differentmean stress correction criteria such as Goodman, Gerber, and no correction under fully reverse sinusoidal load by MSC FATIGUE software. The results show that the most damages occurred around the spot welds due to the highstress concentration in those zones, and also, Goodman is more conservative and the reported number of cycles to failure is lower than Gerber and no stress correction method.

کلیدواژه ها:

Resistance spot welding ، Fatigue life prediction ، Finite element ، ABAQUS ، MSC FATIGUE