Abstract
Spot welding is very important and useful technology in fabrication of an automobile body structure. Because fatigue strength of the spot welding point is however considerably lower than parent metal due to stress concentration at the nugget edge, accurate stress analysis and fatigue stength evaluation of spot welded lap joint are very important to valuate the reliability and durability of automobile body structure and to establish a criterion of long life fatigue design. Many invetigators have studied so far onsystematic fatigue strength evaluation with various methods. It is however necessary to verify their reliability and abailability for practical application to fatigue design of spot welded structure, Thus,in this study, fatigue strength evaluation methods of spot welded lap joint. which are the maximum principal stress method. the fracture and availability with the Weibull probability distribution. From the results, it was found that reliability and availability withe the Weibull probaility distribution. From the results, it was found that reliability and availability of the suggest fatigue strength estimation methods methods were higher than $\Delta$P-$N_f$ relation. However, among them , reliability of the maximum pricipal stress method was the highest.
