Finite element models of spot welds in structural dynamics: review and updating

Spot welds are used extensively in the automotive industry to join panels, and car bodies contain many thousands of spot welds. Different finite element models of spot welds have been created for various types of analysis. When structures with many spot welds are analysed, these detailed models have too many degrees of freedom to be used in practice. Simple models that use few elements must be used instead. This paper reviews the spot weld models available in the literature. Model updating based on the measured vibration characteristics is then used to improve the accuracy of the most common coarse models of spot welds.