Abstract
The mechanical behavior of two rectangular spot-welded plates under bending is investigated in detail. The equivalent thickness of spot-welded plates is introduced in this study and used in explaining the results. The focus of the analysis is to evaluate the effect of spot-welding from the view point of equivalent thickness. The investigation of deflection has been performed as comparing the result from finite element analysis with the measured data of the spot-welded plates for various parameters, such as aspect ratio, area ratio, and distance ratio of spot-welding points. The effect of spot-welding is as large as 62%(at r=1.0) when the area ratio of spot-welding point is just 4.52%.