PSI - Issue 79

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 79 (2026) 17–25

© 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of IGF28 - MedFract3 organizers Keywords: Dissimilar metals; spot welding; fatigue life prediction; Finite Elemenat Analysis; lap joints; residual stress; thermal strain Abstract This study presents a computational framework for fatigue life prediction in spot-welded joints by integrating thermal strain induced prestress with the Morrow mean stress correction model. The approach captures the effects of residual stresses arising from differential thermal expansion, which are especially critical in dissimilar material joints. Finite element simulations were performed on tensile-shear (TS), single-lap (SLJ), and modified tensile-shear (MTS) specimens. Validation against over experimental data from the literature showed that incorporating thermal prestress significantly improved prediction accuracy, with most results falling within a ± 5% error band. The unified framework demonstrated reliable performance across both similar and dissimilar configurations without geometry-specific recalibration. The proposed method offers an efficient and generalizable tool for fatigue assessment in welded structures common to automotive and aerospace applications. 28th International Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity - 3rd Mediterranean Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity Enhancing Structural Analysis of Dissimilar Metal Spot-welded Lap-Joints Utilizing Thermal Strain Generation Algorithm Ibrahim T. Teke a,b *, Ahmet H. Ertas b a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Haliç University, Istanbul, 34060, Türkiye b Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bursa Technical University, Bursa, 16310, Türkiye

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: ibrahimtalhateke@halic.edu.tr, ibrahimtekeiu@gmail.com

2452-3216 © 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of IGF28 - MedFract3 organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2025.12.304