Method of analyzing spot welded structures

Abstract

Method of analyzing spot welded sheet metal structures subjected to forces that promote one or more basic failure modes of either shear tension, in-plane rotation, coach peel, normal tension, or any combination of such basic modes, the method comprising: (i) providing spot welded sheet metal test coupons for analysis of the selected failure mode for the structure to be analyzed and subjecting such test coupons to progressively increasing forces that eventually achieve failure in the selected failure mode to thereby generate measured load and displacement test data; (ii) analyzing the data from the basic modes to derive and extract spot weld strength and stiffness information and then surface fitting such extracted data to create a database; (iii) establishing a computer math model for simulating the spot weld failure modes of the structure and populating the database thereinto to enable simulated physical tests of the structure; (iv) creating a cumulative-damage failure criterion for the spot welded structure that ratios (a) the resultant strength information from the populated math model for selected combinations of load and selected combinations of time and structure thickness, and (b) the measured strength information derived for such combinations of load derived from the test data; and (v) solving the criterion to determine whether it indicates failure for the combination of resultant strength and other values selected.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.