Fatigue behavior of 590MPa Tensile Strength galvanneal coated sheet steel laser welded blanks

Abstract

The use of Laser Welded Blanks (LWBs) with different grade/gauge combinations in automotive body structures is well established; however, the acceptance of LWBs in fatigue critical chassis and underbody components has been slower because of lack of reliable models for durability assessment of laser welded joints (LWJ). Most prior fatigue studies of LWBs are carried out in tension - tension loading mode, making it difficult to relate it to the cyclic deformation and fatigue behaviors of the substrate steel grade. In contrast, in this study, LWJ is conceptualized as a "notch" to estimate the local stresses from the strain - life data of the parent grade and the fatigue notch concentration factor (Kf) is estimated from the nominal stress values of LWJ. The method is illustrated with strain controlled fatigue data for 1.4 mm galvanneal coated 590 MPa steel and fully reversed, fatigue data for homogeneous and heterogeneous LWB combinations. The results indicate that for both homogeneous and heterogeneous LWJ configurations, Kf increases with fatigue life, but tends to saturate at life levels greater than about million cycles. Considering 105 cycles to failure as an example, Kf is estimated as 1.07 for the homogeneous and 1.25 for the heterogeneous combinations.