Abstract
Spot welding is very important and useful technology in fabriaction of the thin sheet structure such as the automobile, train and air craft, Because fatigue strength of the spot welding point is however considerably lower than base metal due to stress concentration at the nugget edge, reasonable fatigue strength evaluation of spot welded lap joint is very important to estimate the reliability and durability of th spot welded structure and to establish a criterion of ling life fatigue design. For reasonalbe fatigue strength evaluation, it is necessary to estimate the fatigue strength of spot welded lap joints, systematically. So far, many investigators have numerically and experimentally studied on the systematic fatigue strength estimation for various spot welded lap joints, and the methods suggested has been considerably accumulated. By the way, for applying them in practical fatigue design of the thin sheet structure fabricated by spot welding ,it is also necessary to verify their efficiency and reliability on the predicted results, Therefore, in this study, a statistical fatigue strength estimation method for spot welded lap joints was developed by using the Weibull probability distribution function. From the result, it was found that fatigue strength and fatigue life of the spot welded lap joints having various dimension were able to be statically predicted . And also, a reliable criterion for long life fatigue design of the spot welded lap joint could be established.