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Finite-element modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints in a top-hat

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DOI: 10.1243/09544062JMES1787

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 Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical
Engineering Science
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Finite-element modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints in a top-hat structure for dynamic
analysis
N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden and H Ouyang
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 2010 224:
851
DOI: 10.1243/09544062JMES1787

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 851

Finite-element modelling and updating of

laser spot weld joints in a top-hat structure for
dynamic analysis
N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden, and H Ouyang∗
Department of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

The manuscript was received on 16 June 2009 and was accepted after revision for publication on 2 October 2009.
DOI: 10.1243/09544062JMES1787

Abstract: Spot welds made by resistance spot welding are used extensively in automotive engi-
neering. However, owing to increasing demands in the use of advanced and lightweight materials,
laser welding has become a popular alternative for producing spot welds. Because of the complex-
ity and uncertainties of laser welds and thus formed structures, the finite-element (FE) modelling
of the welds for dynamic analysis is a research issue. This article first outlines some of the exist-
ing modelling works of spot welds. Then, a hat-plate structure used for this study is described
and its FE representations are explained. The welds are modelled using CWELD elements in
MSC/NASTRAN and their feasibility for representing laser spot welds is investigated. Numerical
results for the initial FE model differ considerably from that of their experimental counterparts;
hence, a model updating procedure is carried out to minimize the discrepancy between the two
sets of results. In this work, the updating is posed as an optimization problem and is performed
using the structural optimization capability (SOL 200) in MSC/NASTRAN. Two stages of updating
are conducted, that is (a) updating FE models of individual components and (b) updating an
FE model of the welded structure. Crucial steps in updating are explained. It is found that by
selecting the right updating parameters, the CWELD element can be used to represent laser spot
welds with good accuracy.

Keywords: finite-element modelling, model updating, modal testing, laser welding, spot weld
joints, CWELD

1 INTRODUCTION access to the part that increases the ability to weld

Resistance spot welding (RSW) is widely used for pro-
ducing a typical vehicle body-in-white (BIW), which
is normally made of thin metal sheets that are con-
nected together by thousands of spot welds. However,
owing to a strong interest in the use of advanced and
lightweight materials (e.g. aluminium alloy, which is
very problematic if welded using the conventional
RSW [1]) for BIW applications in recent years, the
use of laser welding (LW) for producing spot welds is
receiving increasing consideration. The main advan-
tages of using lasers in comparison with the RSW
techniques include non-contact operation, one-sided
∗ Corresponding author: Department of Engineering, University of
Liverpool, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK.
email: h.ouyang@liverpool.ac.uk
hard-to-reach areas, and faster welding rates.
Along with providing connections between sheets
of metals, the welds in vehicle structures also signif-
icantly contribute to the vehicle’s structural stiffness
and dynamic characteristics. Because of their signif-
icance, it is important to have the required physical
understanding on the behaviour of the welds, which
can be achieved by experimental work. However, pre-
dictive tasks such as the design, analysis, and evalua-
tion of welded structures are frequently accomplished
by computational methods. Since there are thousands
of spot welds in a typical BIW, it is not always practi-
cal to model the welds in detail. Therefore, a simple
but reliable finite-element (FE) representation for pre-
dicting the behaviour of the welds must be developed.
Even though computational methods are widely used
in predicting the behaviour of welds on a car structure,
developing a numerical model of the weld itself is a

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852 N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden, and H Ouyang
complex issue. This is mainly because of the existence
of many local effects that are not taken into account by
FE modelling when predicting frequencies and modes.
Obviously, there are many works done on weld mod-
elling. However, it appears that most of the studies
have concentrated on spot welds made by the RSW
[2–4]. Modelling works related to welds made by LW
have focused mainly on simulating the welding pro-
cess itself [5–7] and only a small number of works have
been done on fatigue estimation of laser welds, such as
reference [8]. To the authors’ best knowledge, there is
no reported work on modelling the dynamic behaviour
of structures with laser welds. Section 2 of this arti-
cle summarizes several modelling works on commonly
used joints, i.e. bolted and welded joints.
In this study, a set of nine nominally identical
hat-plate structures are investigated. Each structure
contains 20 spot welds made by LW along their
flanges. Development of the FE model of the structures
involves three stages:
(a) initial FE modelling and manual tuning;
(b) modal testing;
(c) model updating.
The structure of interest and the development of the
initial FE models for its components are described in
section 3. Modal testing is explained in section 4 and
this is followed by the FE model updating in section 5.
Section 6 discusses the modelling and updating works
of the welded structure, including some explana-
tions of the CWELD element and its application in
modelling the welded structure.
2 MODELLING OF JOINTS
Modelling of joints is certainly a subject of special con-
cern and many models have been developed in recent
years. There are many types of joints used in fastening
parts together, with bolted and welded joints being the
most commonly used ones in structural design. Bolted
joints are popular, largely because they can be easily
disassembled, maintained, and/or inspected. How-
ever, this type of joints has many complexities (such
as non-linear frictional behaviour, pretension effect,
etc.) that are difficult to simulate in FE modelling.
As the behaviour of bolted joints plays a signifi-
cant role in the dynamic characteristics of structures,
the need for developing accurate predictive models of
the joints is very demanding. Several authors, such as
Gaul and Nitsche [9], Ibrahim and Pettit [10], Oldfield
et al. [11], and Kim et al. [12], covered the modelling
work associated with bolted joints. The role of fric-
tion in bolted joint connections and modelling issues
associated with the frictional behaviour of the joints
was discussed thoroughly by Gaul and Nitsche [9],
who cited 134 references. The article addressed some
approaches for modelling the non-linear behaviour
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of the bolted joint connections and included several
examples of static and dynamic friction models.
Another highly recommended review paper on bolted
joints by Ibrahim and Pettit [10] focused on prob-
lems relating to the dynamic behaviour of structures
with bolted joints, including 516 references. Joint
uncertainties and relaxation were discussed and iden-
tification of (linear and non-linear) joint properties
was a major topic of that paper. Design issues of fully
and partially restrained joints, sensitivity analysis to
variations of joint parameters, and fatigue prediction
for metallic and composite joints were also covered.
Oldfield et al. [11] investigated a bolted joint under
harmonic loading by using a detailed ABAQUS FE
model to obtain the necessary dynamic information
of the joint and then utilized Jenkins elements and a
Bouc–Wen model to simplify the bolted-joint model.
It was demonstrated that the dynamic properties of
the joint were obtained successfully by the simplified
models with a greatly reduced computational effort.
Kim et al. [12] studied modelling of a structure with
bolted joints using four kinds of FE models
(a) a solid bolt model;
(b) a coupled bolt model;
(c) a spider bolt model;
(d) a no-bolt model.
It was found that the relatively simpler FE models (i.e.
the coupled and spider models) were more effective,
being more than 49 per cent faster and used approxi-
mately only 20 per cent of the memory compared with
the solid bolt model.
In contrast to bolted joints, weld joints are perma-
nent and spot welds are very commonly used in joining
metal sheet-like structures. However, like bolted joints,
reliable evaluations of the behaviour of the welds
are always a concern, since many factors such as
geometrical irregularities, residual stresses, material
inhomogeneity, and defects in the welds are difficult
to be incorporated in modelling [13]. A number of
works on the modelling of spot welds have been pub-
lished (for example, see references [4] and [14] to [17])
and most of these were discussed by Palmonella et al.
[18]. They grouped the spot weld models into two cat-
egories: (a) models for limit capacity analysis, such as
references [4] and [14], and (b) models for dynamic
simulation, as in reference [17]. The first category
of models requires a very detailed mesh in order to
work out a smooth stress field within and around
a spot weld. Normally, brick elements are used to
model welds, while brick or shell elements are used
to model welded plates. This would need tremendous
computational effort, which is impractical if there are
thousands of spot welds.
Deng et al. [4] addressed the underlying three-
dimensional (3D) features of the stress field in spot
welds. Very detailed FE representations of the spot
weld nuggets and the surrounding areas were made,
JMES1787
 FE modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints
with thousands of solid elements being used in the
modelling. A fine mesh was employed within the weld
nugget, whereas a coarse mesh was applied elsewhere.
One of the findings was that stress concentration
appeared near the nugget boundary while the centre of
the nugget was mostly stress-free, which indicates that
the centre of the nugget does not contribute much to
the load-bearing capability of the spot weld. A simpli-
fied version of this model was presented by Chen and
Deng [14]. The solid elements were replaced by the
shell elements and the performance of the shell ele-
ments in modelling the spot welds was investigated.
In that work, the weld nugget was assumed to be rigid,
hence not modelled explicitly, unlike in the 3D solid
model. Apart from the nugget, the rest of the model
adopted the same mesh as the detailed model. The
study demonstrated that the shell element model was
able to estimate the stress field surrounding the spot
weld regions. However, a very refined mesh must be
applied in order to achieve a very good approxima-
tion, which again is not always practical when there
are thousands of welds.
On the other hand, the second category of models
uses very coarse meshes and allows the application of
much simpler models with significantly fewer degrees
of freedom (DOFs). This type of models simulates the
stiffness characteristics of the spot welds and their
contributions towards the behaviour of the structure.
Salvini et al. [16] developed an FE model of spot welds
that took into consideration the structural behaviour
of the regions surrounding the welds, which are nor-
mally not accounted for in the search for simpler spot
weld models. The model was composed of a number
of 3D beam elements oriented in the radial direction
and was so formulated such that it could be easily
employed in complex structures with many spot welds.
The authors also demonstrated an important increase
in accuracy in their developed model.
Another spot weld model was proposed by Heiserer
et al. [15]. The model, known as Area Contact Model 2
(ACM2), was developed using a brick (i.e. HEXA) ele-
ment in MSC/NASTRAN and the connections to the
joined surfaces were via rigid (i.e. RBE3) elements, also
available in MSC/NASTRAN. ACM2 is a coarse spot
weld model and it allows non-congruent meshes to be
employed. This model can be employed for both limit
capacity and dynamics analysis, and also can be used
for subsequent analysis such as model updating.
Alternatively, the CWELD element developed by
MSC/NASTRAN can be employed for the predic-
tion of dynamics behaviour, which is presented in
MSC/NASTRAN documentations and explained in
detail in reference [17]. This element also offers the
prospect of generating weld joints that are indepen-
dent of the mesh, which allows a big reduction in
the computational effort and the model development
time. Like ACM2, CWELD allows the physical proper-
ties of the weld to be considered, which is important
JMES1787
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853
for model updating. So far, CWELD has been widely
used in modelling spot welds produced by RSW and
it is uncertain whether the element can well represent
spot welds made by other processes, especially by LW,
as the construction of the joint in LW is very different
from that in the conventional RSW.
The performance of simplified FE models (i.e.
single-bar, spoke-bar, and multiple rigid-bar models)
against a detailed 3D (or solid) FE model for rep-
resenting spot welds subjected to five basic loading
situations (i.e. tension, out-of-plane torsion, out-of-
plane bending, in-plane torsion, and in-plane shear)
was studied by Xu and Deng [3]. The simplified models
were implemented with several mesh refinements and
their performances were evaluated against the con-
verged 3D FE model. The article showed that the sim-
plified models can be quite accurate in stiffness simu-
lation when subjected to tension, out-of plane torsion,
and bending. However, the models were not reliable
when they were under in-plane torsion and shear.
Although FE modelling of conventional spot welds
has been carried out by a number of researchers, there
has been no work of modelling the spot welds made by
LW for structural dynamic analysis, to the authors’ best
knowledge. It is still uncertain whether the existing
spot weld models can be employed for modelling the
laser spot welds. This is mainly because the construc-
tion of the laser spot welds is dissimilar to that of the
spot welds made by RSW. The aim of this article there-
fore is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing one of
the mostly used elements for spot weld modelling (i.e.
CWELD) for the dynamics prediction of the spot welds
made by LW. The CWELD element and its application
in this work are described further in section 6.1.
3 HAT-PLATE COMPONENTS AND FE
REPRESENTATIONS
A hat-plate structure shown in Fig. 1 is used in this
work. The structure, which consists of a flat plate and
a formed hat-like shell (or ‘top-hat’) joined together
by spot welds at the flanges, is designed to represent
common structures used in the construction of a car
BIW. The spot welds, which are produced by LW, are
5 mm in diameter and 60 mm apart in the longitudinal
Fig. 1 The hat-plate structure
Proc. IMechE Vol. 224 Part C: J. Mechanical Engineering Science
854 N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden, and H Ouyang

manual tuning procedure involves manual alterations

of the model geometry to bring the FE model closer
to the physical structure. It usually includes a small
number of key parameters from the FE model that can
be controlled manually.
In this work, the outcome of the numerical model
Fig. 2 Hat-plate dimensions is found to be sensitive to the top-hat’s fold radii
and the thicknesses of the flat plate and the top-hat.
Therefore, the thicknesses of all the plates are mea-
direction (Fig. 2). The overall dimensions of the hat-
sured at different places and a mean value of 1.45 mm
plates are that they are 564 mm long and 110 mm wide.
is incorporated in the FE models of both compo-
The plates, of thickness 1.5 mm, are made of cold rolled
nents. Furthermore, a closer inspection of the top-hats
mild steel sheet metal. A set of nine identical pairs
reveals that the fold radii are approximately 4 mm,
of the structures are built in-house, each having the
which is 1 mm smaller than the specified radii. The
same nominal dimensions. In order to reduce manu-
radius corrections are then incorporated in the manual
facturing variability, a general procedure, as outlined
tuning of the top-hat.
by Mottershead et al. [13], is followed.
Solution 103 in MSC/NASTRAN is used to compute
The FE models of the flat plate and the top-hat,
the modal data of the components and the results are
shown in Fig. 3, are produced in MSC/NASTRAN using
shown in Table 1 (column II). It can be observed that
four-noded shell elements (CQUAD4). The flat plate’s
the natural frequencies are distinct for both compo-
FE model consists of a total of 300 elements and
nents. Validations of the FE models are carried out
350 nodes, while the top-hat’s FE model consists of
by comparing the numerical natural frequencies with
3008 elements and 3894 nodes. Nominal values for
the natural frequencies obtained from modal testing,
the material properties of mild steel are used for both
which is explained in section 4.
models, with Young’s modulus E = 210 GPa, Poisson’s
ratio ν = 0.3, and density ρ = 7860 kg/m3 .
It is essential to highlight that FE model updating
can only correct the errors that originated from the 4 MODAL TESTING OF INDIVIDUAL
uncertainties of modelling parameters in a geomet- COMPONENTS
rically well-defined model. Therefore, manual tuning
of the initial model, based on trial and error and/or Experimental modal analysis (or modal testing) has
engineering judgement, must be carried out first. The become an active research topic since decades ago

Fig. 3 FE models of (a) the flat plate and (b) the top-hat

Table 1 Experimental, initial, and updated natural frequencies for flat plate and top-hat components

I II III IV V VI VII
Component Mode Experiment (Hz) Initial (Hz) Error (%) = |(II–I)/I| MAC Updated (Hz) Error (%) = |(V–I)/I| MAC

Flat plate 1 24.20 24.28 0.34 100 24.19 0.04 100

2 67.10 67.46 0.54 100 67.11 0.02 100
3 78.07 75.13 3.77 100 76.17 2.44 100
4 132.24 133.55 0.99 100 132.68 0.33 100
5 159.54 154.07 3.43 100 155.97 2.24 100
Top-hat 1 70.04 67.93 3.01 96 69.87 0.24 96
2 272.72 259.47 4.86 95 270.46 0.83 95
3 286.67 276.12 3.68 97 286.79 0.04 97
4 333.58 337.65 1.22 99 338.37 1.44 99
5 394.76 390.10 1.18 98 398.40 0.92 99

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 FE modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints
Fig. 4 Test set-up for (a) the flat plates and (b) the top-hats
[19, 20]. Modal testing with the free–free boundary
condition was conducted on each specimen from both
sets of components. Figure 4 shows the experimental
set-up for (a) the flat plates and (b) the top-hats. The
flat plates were tested using one hammer point and
two measurement points (Fig. 4(a)), while the top-
hats were tested using one hammer point and five
measurement points (Fig. 4(b)), with only the first five
modes measured from both sets of tests. The locations
of the impact and measurement points were carefully
chosen such that they are not located near any nodal
points. Furthermore, the mass of each accelerometer
was only 1.6 g, while the mass of the flat plate and
the top-hat was 0.7 and 1.1 kg, respectively. Hence, the
effect of mass loading was very minimal.
The vibration responses from both tests were mea-
sured using a 12-channel LMS data acquisition system.
Natural frequencies and mode shapes were extracted
from the measured FRF by using a PolyMAX curve-
fitting procedure from the LMS Test.Lab system. The
average experimental natural frequencies for both
components are computed and tabulated in Table 1
(column I). For the flat plate, discrepancies of the pre-
dicted natural frequencies from the measured data are
<1 per cent in bending modes (i.e. modes 1, 2, and
4) but higher errors in torsion modes (i.e. modes 3
and 5) are obtained. On the other hand, the errors
of the top-hat are considerably high (with the maxi-
mum of approximately 4.9 per cent) for the first three
modes but reasonably good (with maximum error of
1.2 per cent) for the two remaining modes, as can
be seen in Table 1 (column III). Hence, FE model
updating has to be carried out in order to identify
the uncertain parameters and therefore improve the
results.
5 UPDATING OF THE MODELS
Model updating is a viable approach to improve the
correlation between FE models and the experimental
data by minimizing the differences between results
from the two approaches [21–25]. In this article,
updating is cast as a structural optimization problem
JMES1787
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855
[26–28], and the optimization algorithm (SOL 200) of
the FE code NASTRAN is used to perform the updating.
5.1 Formulation of model updating procedure
The equation of motion for undamped free vibration
of a structure can be expressed as
(−λM + K)u = 0 (1)
where M and K are the n × n mass and stiffness
matrices of the structure, and u is the n×1 modal dis-
placement vector (with n being the number of DOFs
of the whole structure). λ = ω2 is the eigenvalue and ω
is the natural frequency of the structure.
When the vector θ of structural parameters (such
as the Young’s modulus) is changed, the vector λ of
m eigenvalues normally changes as well. Approxima-
tions used in NASTRAN are based on simple first-order
Taylor series expansion and the general form of this
expansion for λ is
λi+1 = λi + Si (δθ) (2)
In equation (2), Si is an m × n sensitivity matrix at ith
iteration, which denotes the rates of change of the
structural eigenvalues, λi , with respect to changes in
parameters, δθ, which can be expressed as [21]


∂λi ∂K ∂M
Si = = u Ti − λi ui (3)
∂θ ∂θ ∂θ
It should be noted that any modifications made to the
system parameters could affect the modal properties
of the system. Therefore, the parameters and modal
properties involved in the updating process must be
selected properly. Selection of the right parameters
and modal properties for the updating procedure are
briefly explained in the next sections.
An objective function based on residuals between
the experimental modal data (e.g. natural frequencies,
mode shapes, etc.) and their predictions is set for min-
imization in the updating procedure. The procedure
continues until convergence is accomplished when
Proc. IMechE Vol. 224 Part C: J. Mechanical Engineering Science
856 N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden, and H Ouyang

Table 2 Updating results for the flat plate and the top-hat

I II
Component Parameter Initial value Updated value Changes (%) = |(II–I)/I|

Flat plate Young’s modulus, Eflatplate (GPa) 210 209 0.48

Shear modulus, Gflatplate (GPa) 81 83 2.47
Top-hat Fold thickness, t1 (mm) 1.45 1.38 4.83
Flange thickness, t2 (mm) 1.45 1.49 2.76
Sidewall thickness, t3 (mm) 1.45 1.48 2.07
Top thickness, t4 (mm) 1.45 1.52 4.83

the difference between values of the objective func- 81 GPa, respectively. The Young’s modulus is allowed
tion J from consecutive iterations is sufficiently small. to vary from 185 to 220 GPa, while the shear modu-
In this work, the objective function is constructed on lus is given only a small variation from 80 to 84 GPa.
the basis of eigenvalue residuals, given by The thicknesses of the top-hat are given the same ini-
 2 tial values of 1.45 mm, with lower and upper bounds

n
λj of 1.20 and 1.60 mm, respectively. During updating,
J= exp − 1 (4) the parameters are normalized in the form of θ /θ0
j=1
λj
so that the initial normalized parameter values are
exp unity. Hence, the sensitivities become (δλ/δθ )θ 0 , where
where λj is the jth experimental eigenvalue and λj
δ denotes a small increment.
is the jth eigenvalue predicted by the FE model. It is
important to note that equation (4) only holds if the
measured eigenvalue and its predicted counterpart
5.3 Updating results
are paired correctly, and therefore it is vital to ensure
that the experimental and numerical data relate to the Updating is done by minimizing the objective
same mode. In addition, it is generally preferable to function, as explained in section 5.1, and performed
use a larger number of experimental modal proper- on the basis of the first five measured frequencies.
ties in the updating process. Obviously, this would be Table 1 (column V) shows the updating results for
more difficult, but the updated model would be more the flat plate and the top-hat, while Table 2 shows
predictive than by using only a few modal data. the changes in updating parameters from the initial
values. Figures 5 and 6 show the changes of the updat-
ing parameters for both components from the initial
5.2 Parameter selection
normalized values of unity to convergence.
Selecting the updating parameters is an important Convergence is obtained very quickly for both com-
aspect of the FE model updating process [21, 23, ponents and the updated natural frequencies are
26] and any parameters for material and geometric significantly better, especially for the top-hat where
properties (such as area, inertia, thickness, diame- errors of less than 1.5 per cent are achieved. All the
ter, density, Young’s modulus, etc.) can be considered. natural frequencies of the flat plate are improved and
However, the parameters selected should be justi- the errors for the torsion modes are reduced by more
fied by engineering understanding of the structure than 1 per cent. Modal assurance criterion (MAC) anal-
[25, 29–31] and the number of parameters should be ysis was performed on both components based on the
kept to a minimum to avoid ill-conditioning problems measured points mentioned in the previous section.
[26]. Therefore, it is necessary to compute the eigen-
value sensitivities beforehand, so that only the most
influential parameters can be chosen.
Having done the sensitivity analysis using SOL 200,
two parameters are selected for the flat plate and four
parameters are chosen for the top-hat, as follows:
(a) the Young’s modulus of the flat plate, Eflatplate ;
(b) the shear modulus of the flat plate, Gflatplate ;
(c) the thickness of the folds for the top-hat, t1 ;
(d) the thickness of the flanges for the top-hat, t2 ;
(e) the thickness of the sidewalls for the top-hat, t3 ;
(f) the thickness of the top for the top-hat, t4 .
The initial values of the Young’s modulus and the Fig. 5 Parameter changes from the initial values of unity
shear modulus of the flat plate are set to 210 and for the flat plate

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 FE modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints 857

complete welded structure. By ignoring the uncertain-

ties due to manufacturing when welding the complete
samples, the uncertainties in the complete model are
attributed only to the weld modelling.

6 FE MODELLING OF THE COMPLETE

STRUCTURE

This section details the use of CWELD element for rep-

Fig. 6 Parameter changes from the initial values of unity
for the top-hat
As the mode shapes of the flat plate are well known a
priori, two DOFs are believed to be sufficient to iden-
tify the measured mode shapes. On the other hand,
more measured DOFs are needed for the top-hat. The
mode shapes of the numerical models have excellent
correlation with the experimental data, which can be
seen from the MAC values in Table 1 (columns IV and
VII). Obviously, using more measured points will pro-
duce more reliable MAC values and this is done for the
complete structure (see section 6.3).
The updated results show that the FE models of
the components are now closer to the experimental
model; hence, they can be employed in modelling the
resenting the spot welds in the FE model of the welded
structure. The updated FE models of the flat plate and
the top-hat are utilized, and the success in updating
both models indicates that the uncertainties incorpo-
rated in the complete model are merely due to the
modelling of the welds.
6.1 CWELD and its application in modelling the
complete structure
The CWELD element (Fig. 7) is developed using a two-
noded special shear flexible beam type element with
12 DOFs (six for each node) and each node is con-
nected to its corresponding patch with constraints
from the Kirchhoff shell theory [17]. In modelling the
welded hat-plate, 20 CWELD elements are employed
to represent the 20 spot welds, as shown in Fig. 8.
The initial values for the material properties and the

Fig. 7 Representation of the CWELD element

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Fig. 9 Test set-up for the hat-plate

Fig. 8 FE model of the welded structure

diameter of the CWELD elements are defined, with the
diameter being 5 mm and the material properties are
assumed to be the same as the bulk material’s nominal
values. Lower and upper patches surrounding each
weld are assumed to have the same size and mate-
rial properties. The size of the patch is set to be 20
per cent bigger than the nominal diameter of the
spot weld, while a higher value of Young’s modulus
is assigned to the patches surrounding each weld (i.e.
Epatch = 350 GPa) in order to acknowledge the higher
rigidity of the weld connection than the adjacent bulk
material.
6.2 Initial FE results
The first five frequencies of the initial FE model are
tabulated in Table 3 (column II) and the FE results are
validated by comparing them with their experimental
counterparts, which is explained in the next section.
6.3 Modal tests on the welded structures
The welded structures were tested by free–free ham-
mer tests with three hammer points and seven mea-
surement points (Fig. 9) to determine the first five
natural frequencies. Hammer point 1 was hit in two
directions (i.e. the x- and z-directions), while ham-
mer point 2 was hit only in the z-direction. Multiple
hammer points were chosen to excite certain modes
which apparently could not be excited when a sin-
gle hammer point was employed. Six accelerometers
were placed on the flat plate where most deforma-
tions occur and only one was placed on the sidewall
of the hat. Both hammer and measurement points
were chosen with care so that they are not near any
nodal points. The responses were measured by using
the 12-channels LMS system and extracted using the
PolyMAX curve-fitting procedure.
An additional test (i.e. 80-point roving hammer test
with the free–free boundary condition) was conducted
on one of the welded structures so as to capture the
actual mode shapes of the experimental model. MAC
values listed in columns IV and VII in Table 3 are com-
puted from these detailed experimental modes and
FE modes. The average measured natural frequen-
cies for the samples are shown in Table 3 (column I).
While the MAC values are already good, the natural
frequencies of all the experimental modes are signif-
icantly underestimated by the numerical model with
frequency errors being more than 3 per cent. The big
errors show the critical need for removing the uncer-
tainties from the weld modelling. Therefore, the model
updating procedure has to be carried out.
6.4 Model updating of the complete model
The updating procedure outlined in section 5 is
applied to the FE model of the welded structure and
SOL 200 is run to update the model until the computed
natural frequencies match those from the modal test-
ing. Several parameters are investigated for updating
but only three of them are selected for the procedure,
as explained in the following section.

Table 3 Natural frequencies for the complete structure

I II III IV V VI VII
Mode Experiment (Hz) Initial (Hz) Error (%) = |(II–I)/I| MAC Updated (Hz) Error (%) = |(V–I)/I| MAC

1 508.12 489.94 3.58 95 501.44 1.32 96

2 553.69 524.37 5.30 88 562.18 1.53 89
3 575.39 555.74 3.42 98 571.67 0.65 98
4 627.45 587.24 6.41 78 630.16 0.43 82
5 643.66 594.18 7.69 96 634.53 1.42 96

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 FE modelling and updating of laser spot weld joints 859

Table 4 Spot weld parameters changes after updating

I II
Parameter Initial value Updated value Changes (%) = |(II–I)/I|

Diameter, dweld (mm) 5 5.5 9.13

Weld Young’s modulus, Eweld (GPa) 210 220 4.73
Patch Young’s modulus, Epatch (GPa) 350 652 210.69

6.4.1 Updating parameters Therefore, several parameters from the spot welds and
the patch of the welds (such as the diameter, thick-
There are uncertainties in the material properties of nesses, Young’s moduli, densities, and Poisson’s ratios)
the spot welds and the surrounding areas (or patch). are investigated by carrying out the sensitivity analy-
sis. The patch parameters are included because it is
found that the weld parameters alone cannot success-
fully improve the results of the initial model. Of all the
possible parameters, the weld diameter dweld and the
Young’s moduli of the weld and the patch, Eweld and
Epatch , are selected for the updating process.
For the updating procedure, each of the three
parameters has an initial value, as shown in Table 4
(column I) and they are allowed to have some vari-
ations depending on the uncertainty level associated
Fig. 10 Parameter changes from the initial values of with the parameters. The values of the weld parame-
unity for the complete model ters (i.e. dweld and Eweld ) are allowed to vary in a limited

Fig. 11 Mode shapes of the hat-plate

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860 N A Husain, H H Khodaparast, A Snaylam, S James, G Dearden, and H Ouyang
reasonable range only, while the Young’s modulus of
the patch is allowed to have a very big variation due to
high uncertainties of the patch properties. As men-
tioned in section 6.1, a higher initial value of Epatch
is assigned to justify the rigidness of the patch in
comparison to the adjacent bulk materials.
6.4.2 Model updating and its results
Updating is carried out on the basis of the first five
measured frequencies from the welded samples. The
natural frequencies and the MAC values of the updated
model are presented in Table 3 (column V and VII),
while the updated values of the parameters are shown
in Table 4 (column II). After the updating procedure, it
is found that all the natural frequencies are improved
significantly and the MAC value for mode 4 is much
better. The updating converges after three iterations,
as depicted in Fig. 10, and the mode shapes are shown
in Fig. 11.
The results achieved show that the CWELD param-
eters (i.e. dweld and Eweld ) are well within reasonable
limits. Attention is given to the Young’s modulus of the
patch (i.e. Epatch ) which is considered as the parameter
that most affects the behaviour of the model. Based
on the updating results, it is found that Epatch should
be approximately three times the Young’s modulus of
the weld.
7 CONCLUSIONS
This work has reviewed some of the FE models devel-
oped to represent spot welds normally produced by
RSW in the past. Amongst all these models, CWELD is
selected to model the spot welds made by LW. Initially,
the capability of the element to represent the laser
spot welds is uncertain and its potential in produc-
ing reasonably accurate values of natural frequencies
is questionable.
Numerical results show that the initial frequencies
are very low in comparison with the experimental
ones when CWELD is used and it is believed that
the CWELD parameters alone cannot improve the
results of the initial model even after updating. Fur-
ther investigation reveals that when a patch param-
eter is included in the updating, the results improve
significantly. The approach indicates that the right
selection and combination of updating parameters is
important in minimizing the errors in the FE model.
However, the procedure itself does not guarantee that
the updated parameters will have physical meanings;
hence, proper selections of parameters and their val-
ues must be made to ensure that a realistic model is
obtained in the process. The combined use of CWELD
and SOL 200 by NASTRAN in modelling laser spot-
welded structures allows wider applications of the
approach developed in this article.
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Most importantly, it is essential to have an appro-
priate mesh in the FE model since it will influence
the size of the patch used in the FE model. In this
work, the patch size is set to be 20 per cent bigger
than the nominal diameter of the weld and, based on
the updating results, the Young’s modulus of the patch
should be three times the value of the Young’s modu-
lus of the weld. These values are recommended for the
dynamic analysis of structures of similar constructions
with many laser spot welds when the CWELD element
is used.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Discussion with Dr Zongjun Lu of Jaguar and Land
Rover is gratefully acknowledged. Nurulakmar Abu
Husain would like to thank the Malaysian Min-
istry of Higher Education (MOHE) and the Uni-
versiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) for their support.
Hamed Haddad Khodaparast wishes to acknowledge
the support of EC Marie Curie Excellence Project
ECERTA under the contract number MEXT-CT-2006-
042383.
© Authors 2010
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