DYNAMIC FAILURE OF A SPOT WELD IN LAP-SHEAR TESTS UNDER COMBINED LOADING CONDITIONS

This paper is concerned with the evaluation of the dynamic failure load in the lap-shear tests of a spot weld. Dynamic lap-shear tests of a spot weld in SPRC340R were conducted with different tensile speeds ranging from 5×10-5 m/sec to 5.0 m/sec. Dynamic effects on the failure load of a spot weld are examined based on the experimental data. Experimental results indicate that failure strength increases with increasing loading rates. Finite element analyses of dynamic lap-shear tests were also performed considering the failure of a spot weld. A spot weld is modeled with a beam element and dynamic failure model is utilized in order to describe the failure of a spot weld in the simulation. The failure loads obtained from the analyses are compared to those from the lap-shear tests. The comparison shows that the failure loads obtained from the analyses are close in consistence with those obtained from the experiments.