Abstract
Since stainless steel sheets have good mechanical properties, weldability, appearance and corrosion resistance, they are commonly used as one of the structural materials of the railroad cars or the commercial vehicles which are manufactured by the spat welding. Among the many kinds of spot welded lap joints, it can be found that multi-lap joints are employed in their body structure. But, fatigue strength of these joints is lower than that of base metal due to high stress concentration at the nugget edge of spot weld and is considerably influenced by welding conditions as well as the mechanical and geometrical factors. Thus, it is necessary to establish a reasonable and systematic design criterion for the long life design of the spot-welded body structures. In this paper, the stress distribution and deformation around the spot-welded multi-lap joints subjected to tensile shear load was numerically analyzed. Also, the $\Delta$P-Nf curve was obtained by fatigue tests. Using these results, $\Delta$P-Nf curves were rearranged in to the ${\Delta}{\sigma}$-Nf relation with the maximum stress at nugget edge of spot weld.
