• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.55-59
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• 2004

Spot welding is a very important and useful technology in fabrication of thin sheet structures such as the parts in an automobile. However, because the fatigue strength of the spot welding point is considerably lower than that of the base metal due to stress concentration at the nugget edge, the nugget size must be estimated to evaluate a reasonable fatigue strength at a spot welded lap joint. So far, many investigators have experimentally studied the estimation of fatigue strengths of various spot weldments by using a destructive method. However, these destructive methods poses problems so testing of weldments by these methods are difficult. Furthermore, these methods cannot be applied to a real product, and are time and cost consuming, as well. Therefore, there has been a strong, continual demand for the development of a nondestructive method for estimating nugget size. In this study, the effective nugget size in spot weldments have been analyzed by using thermoelastic stress analysis adopting infrared thermography. Using the results of the temperature distribution obtained by analysis of the infared stress due to adiabatic heat expansion under sinusoidal wave stresses, the effective nugget size in spot welded specimens were estimated. To examine the evaluated effective nugget size in spot weldments, it was compared with the results of microstructure observation from a 5％ Nital etching test.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.48-53
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• 2006

A methodology is described for predicting the fatigue life of the resistance spot weldment including strain rate effect. Because it is difficult to perform a physical failure test with high strain rate, an analytical method is necessary to get the mechanical properties of various strain rate, To this end, quasi-static tensile-shear tests at several strain rate were performed on spot weldments of SPC. These test provided the empirical data with the strain rate. With these results, we formulated the function of fatigue life prediction using the lethargy coefficient which is the global material property from tensile test. And, we predicted the fatigue life of spot weldment at dynamic strain rate. To confirm this method for fatigue life prediction, analytical results were compared with the experimental fatigue data.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.59-64
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• 2002

When the vehicle travels in an actual road, resistance spot weldments of the vehicle structure are exposed to complex loading state. Since the fatigue strength in resistance spot weldment of vehicle body can be determined by effect of residual stresses and loading state of driving, estimating actual loading state and considering residual stress effect are needed. In this study, Fatigue stress-fatigue life relation concerned residual stress effect was obtained by thermo elastic plastic finite element analysis. And applied loading in resistance spot weldments of vehicle body was calculated by dynamic analysis. Presumption of fatigue life was performed using proposed method

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.58-64
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• 2001

The initiation and propagation lives of fatigue crack were studied for spot weldments composed of cold rolled steel plates(SPC$\times$SPC) and galvanized steel plates(GA$\times$GA) using DC potential drop method(DCPDM). Through the various test results, it was known that the fatigue crack initiation and propagation behaviors in all specimens could be definitely detected by DCPDM. The fatigue crack initiation life( $N_{i}$) detected by DCPDM in SPC$\times$SPC and GA$\times$GA spot weldments increased as the welding current and the nugget diameter( $N_{d}$) increased. The fatigue crack propagation life($\Delta$ $N_{f-i}$) declined as the difference of $N_{i}$ and the fatigue fracture life( $N_{f}$) also increased according to the decrease of fatigue load, $\Delta$P and the increase of nugget diameter. In the same spot weldments, the increase of nugget diameter came to increase fatigue crack propagation life owing to a decrease of stress concentration in front of nugget, especially the increasing extent for GA$\times$GA spot weldment was very high. In the welding current 6kA, $N_{f}$ for GA$\times$GA spot weldment decreased more than that of SPC$\times$SPC specimen due to zinc layer coated in steel plate and undersized nugget diameter. On the other hand, in 8kA and 10kA, the GA$\times$GA spot weldment showed higher $N_{f}$ in spite of lower $N_{i}$, than that of SPC$\times$SPC specimen except 3,000N fatigue load.ue load. load.d.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.42 no.2 s.140
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• pp.129-135
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• 2005

At present, fatigue design of welded structures is primarily based on a nominal stress or hot spot stress approach with a series of classified weld S-N curves. Although well accepted by major industries, the nominal stress based fatigue design approach is cumbersome in terms of securing a series of S-N curves corresponding to each class of joint types and loading modes. The hot spot stress based fatigue design has a difficulty of finding a proper stress through the global model, the midium size model, and the detail model of ship structure. Also, it is difficult to link proper displacements within three different mesh size models. Recently, the structural stress is proposed as a mesh-size insensitive structural stress definition that gives a stress state at weld toe with relatively large mesh size. However, this method requires an experimental validation in obtaining the fatigue strength of weldments. Therefore, in this study, a series of experiment is performed for various sizes of weldments.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.18-22
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• 2015

The importance of emotional quality of car is getting higher in these days. Noise takes great portion in emotional quality because it is detectable problem with just a few rides. The sources of car noise during operation are various and the related technical issues are vast. Sometimes weldments of auto body are referred as the source of noise and the suspicious weldment shows unsatisfactory welding quality in most cases. In this research, cases of noise making weldments are investigated to figure out the solution for welding quality improvement. They are categorized into several groups in according to the inferred types of the error source then appropriate solutions are suggested. Auto body has weldments of resistance spot welding and gas metal arc welding in general. Therefore the solutions are suggested as adjustment of welding process variables and related machineries. Inevitable error source is also referred which is originated from thermal expansion rate difference between ultra high strength steel and mild steel. This new approach is validated through simple calculation then more concrete investigation with numerical analysis is remained as further works to be done.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.62-69
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• 1990

Being focused on the recent studies that the fatigue strength of resistance spot weldmentes can be improved by using ellipsoidal weld nuggets, the voltage and temperature distribution in resistance spot weldments were simulated for the various rectangular electrodes which had the different aspect ratio of the contact area. Because the electrode shape was not axi-symmetric, the solution domain for simulation should be three dimensional. A series of experiments were carred out to verify the analytically obtained temperature distribution in the weldment. From the calculational and experimental results, it could be revealed that the nugget took the form of ellipsoid, while both results showed a considerable discrepancy for the high aspect ratio.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.396-398
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• 2005

At present, fatigue design of welded structures is primarily based on nominal stress or hot spot stress approach with a series of classified weld S-N curves. However, these methods are known to possess drawbacks, such as difficulty associated with defining proper nominal stress and the finite element sue sensitivity etc. Recently, a mesh-size insensitive structural stress definition is proposed by Battelle that gives a stress state at weld toe with relatively large mesh size. The structural stress definition is based on the elementary structural mechanics theory and provides an effective measure of a stress state in front of weld toe. As an experimental validation of the structural stress method in obtaining the fatigue strength of weldments, a series of experiment is carried out for various sizes of weldments. Based on the result from this study, it is expected to develop a more precise fatigue strength evaluation technique and to save time period required in the fatigue design of ship and offshore structures.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.58-63
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• 2008

Cold rolled and high strength steel were used for vehicle bodys to satisfy environmental regulation and improve fuel ratio. This paper presented a method far determining the fatigue life of cold rolled steel sheet EZNCEN and high strength steel sheet HS40R spot weldment used in vehicles. We can estimate the fatigue life of the spot weldments from the MSC/FATIGUE using the finite element method. The maximum load is found in the nugget part of both surfaces. The cold rolled steel and the high strength steel showed the maximum stress 746MPa and 730MPa in the effective nugget part when the weld current was 8KA and 7KA, respectively. Also the some weld current of the cold rolled steel and high strength steel is applied, the fatigue life of high strength steel is obtained about four times longer than the cold rolled steel.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.967-976
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• 2011

Conventional fracture tests of resistance spot welds have been performed without consideration of the paint baking process in the automobile manufacturing line. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the paint baking process on load carrying capacity and fracture mode for resistance spot welded 590 dual phase (DP), 780DP, 980DP, 590 transformation in duced plasticity (TRIP), 780TRIP and 1180 complex phase (CP) steels. With paint baking after resistance spot welding, the l-shape tensile test (LTT) and nano-indentation test were conducted on the as-welded and paint baked samples. Paint baking increased the load-carrying capacity of the resistance spot welded samples and improved the fracture appearance from partial interfacial fracture (PIF) to button fracture (BF). Improvement in fracture appearance after LTT is observed on weldments of 780 MPa grade TRIP steels, especially in the low welding current range with paint baking conditions. The higher carbon contents (or carbon equivalent) are attributed to the low weldability of the resistance spot welding of high strength steels. Improvement of the fracture mode and load carrying ability has been achieved with ferrite hardening and carbide formation during the paint baking process. The average nano-indentation hardness profile for each weld zone shows hardening of the base metal and softening of the heat affected zone (HAZ) and the weld metal, which proves that microstructural changes occur during low temperature heat treatment.