A Study of Fatigue Life Prediction for Automotive Spot Weldment Using Local Strain Approach

The fatigue crack initiation life is studied on automotive tensile-shear spot weldment made from cold rolled carbon steel(SPC) sheet by using DCPDM and local strain approach. It can be found that the fatigue crack initiation behavior in spot weldment can be definitely detected by DCPDM system. To predict the fatigue life of spot weldment, the local stresses and strains at the potential critical region are estimated by approximate method based on Neubers rule and elastic-plastic FEM analysis. A satisfactory correlation between the predicted life obtained from Local strain approach based on Neubers rule and experimental life can be found in spot weldment within a factor of 2.