A notch stress method for fatigue life prediction of spot-welded joints

Spot-welded joints are widely used in the construction of vehicle structures and frequently become critical locations for fatigue failure. Hence, it is essential to have reliable fatigue life prediction method for the spot-welded joints during vehicle structure design. In this paper, a new notch stress approach is developed for fatigue life prediction of the spot-welded joints. Currently, structural stress methods are widely used in automotive industry for fatigue life prediction of spot-welded joints. However, these methods are not well considering local geometry information. This paper introduces a notch stress based method to overcome the limitation of the structural stress methods. In the notch stress method, stress concentration factors for spot-welded joints are calculated from stress intensity factor equations. Then, the notch stress method is validated with fatigue test results of lap-shear and coach peel specimens.