Study of Fatigue Behavior for Spot Welded Tensile Shear Specimens of Advanced High Strength Steels

For automotive body‐in‐white applications the influence of manufacture‐related gaps between the steel sheets and also of manufacture‐related surface cracks on the fatigue behavior of tensile shear specimens for spot welded TRIP steel was analyzed. It was shown that gaps between the steel sheets reduce the fatigue strength, whereas the fatigue behavior is neither influenced by cracks in the electrode indentation area nor in the heat effected zone.