Abstract
The fatigue strength of spot‐welded stainless sheet steels has been investigated. The main part of the fatigue tests was performed on a cold rolled austenitic stainless sheet steel (AISI304) in air at ambient temperature. For comparison, a duplex stainless steel (SAF2304) of similar yield strength as AISI304 was also incorporated into the test programme. Since the fatigue strength of spot‐welded joints depends on the mode of loading, both shear‐loaded and peel‐loaded joints were tested. The fatigue strength of the spot‐welded stainless steels was found to decrease with decreasing sheet thickness. Furthermore, the fatigue strength for peel‐loaded joints is lower than that of shear‐loaded joint for sheets of equal thickness.The local loading conditions at the weld edge have been analysed in terms of finite element calculations and fracture mechanics. A design parameter derived from a fracture mechanics analysis was defined for spot‐welded stainless sheet steels. It was shown to predict the fatigue life of the present steels and joint configurations in a satisfactory way.
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