Fatigue Crack initiation and Early Growth in Tensile-Shear Spot Weldments
by
James C. McMahon
Frederick V. Lawrence. Jr.
Abstract
I. INTRODUCTION
The fatigue behavior of electrical resistance spot welds has recently received much attention principally because the automobile industry has used thinner gauges of steel to replace thicker sections in an effort to reduce vehicle weight. The change to unit-body construction practices resulted in considerable weight savings but caused spot welds to become the main structural welds and required them to endure the cyclic loading conditions experienced by automobiles.
Spot welds are employed as structural joints in several ways; and spot weld specimens used for fatigue tests commonly have three different configuations or designs as shown in Fig. 1: the tensile-shear (TS), the coach-peel (CP), and the cross-tension (CT). The TS configuration is the strongest and most effective use of the spot weld; and therefore, it is the subject of this work.
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