Abstract
Spot welds are widely used to join plate structures such as an automotive and the vibration characteristics of the whole structure are highly affected by the spot welded joints. For real spot welded structures, the real spot weld locations are different from those in design drawings. In this paper, we investigate the effect of spot weld location variability on vibration characteristics of plate structures based on Fuzzy finite element method. As an interval analysis in the Fuzzy finite element method, Monte Carlo simulation is used. From the membership functions and the histogram of the natural frequencies, we discuss the effect of spot weld location variability on vibration characteristics. As an example structure, the structure that consists of hat section steel plates joined together by 20 spot welds at the flanges is used.
