Efficient frequency-domain based fatigue life estimation of spot welds in vehicle components

Abstract

The estimation of the damage and fatigue life of spot welds in vehicle components with hundreds or thousands thereof within reasonable computation time is a challenge even for recent computers in automotive industry. Hence, an advanced procedure in the frequency-domain is proposed. Whereas the general frequency-domain approach is well-established, it nevertheless becomes efficient for a large number of spot welds only with a package of measures. Among others, a two-scale FE-method using a pre-processed data base for various spot weld/sheet geometries and specified basic load cases, application of the cutting-plane method, and a priori stress estimations to reduce the number of spot welds to be checked completely are suggested. By the example of a tank of a cooling medium in a vehicle it is shown that the proposed algorithm may reduce the computation time as compared to time-domain calculations substantially.