Allows for the study of fatigue performance of spot welds in
structures.
Currently, only Stress-Life (SN) based Spot Weld Fatigue Analysis is supported. Spot weld fatigue
can only be applied to spot welds between two
shells. The spot weld location is defined by three
attributes, sheet 1, sheet 2, and the nugget. The
sheets are defined by shell elements, and the nugget
is defined by CWELD,
CBAR, CBEAM,
or CHEXA elements. The nugget can
be directly connected to the shells or
RBE2/RBE3
elements can be used to connect the nugget to the
shells. Figure 1. Spot Weld Fatigue
The length of the spot weld is determined by the attached shell thicknesses. If T1 and T2 are the thicknesses of the two shells, then the length of the spot weld element, L is equal to (T1+T2)/2.
