The influence of spot weld position variation on geometrical quality

The body of a car is typically joined by thousands of spot welds. The spot welds guarantee the strength of the car, but their positions also affect the geometrical quality of subassemblies and the final product. In practice, the positions of the weld points often deviate from nominal position. By analyzing industrial scanning data, deviations of spot weld positions are found to be of magnitudes up to 19 mm. In this paper, the influence of variation in position of spot welds is investigated with respect to geometrical quality, by simulating and analyzing the geometrical variation of an A-pillar assembly.