Stress analysis of auto-body assembly based on ANSYS

Based on finite element method, the influence of vertical clamping gap, horizontal clamping gap and quantity of welding spots on the maximum stress of welding spot was analyzed. Finite element analysis model was established by adopting parametric design language of software ANSYS. The above-mentioned influencing factors were parameterized by defining variables, and spot welding set was created with the built-in spot welding simulation function of ANSYS. Comparing to traditional method of simulating spot welding with coupled degrees of freedom, the proposed method not only had taken into consideration the factors including spot welding radius and strength of welding spot, but also was more convenient for application. The simulation results showed that horizontal clamping gap had greater influence on welding spot than vertical clamping gap, and the maximum stress at each single welding spot reduced with the increasing of welding spots quantity and effective connection area.