Analytical studies for buckling and vibration of weld-bonded beam shells of rectangular cross-section

An approach to analytical solution is presented for vibration and buckling of thin-walled tubular beam shells typical of automotive structures, which are fabricated by joining sheet metal stampings along the two longitudinal edges with periodic spot welds, adhesive bonding, or combination of spot welds and bonding, known as weld bonding. Solutions are obtained for such beam shells of rectangular cross-section with two opposite ends simply supported. The beam shell is modeled as an assembly of the constituent walls and Levy-type formulation is used to obtain a series solution for the transverse displacement of each of the walls. The challenge of expressing the discrete point support conditions at the spot welds by a continuous function is addressed using the flexibility function approach used in literature. The flexibility function, used earlier to represent the flexibility distribution along weld-bonded edges of rectangular plates with periodic spot welds, is used here. The characteristic equations are obtained by satisfying the displacement, slope, shear, and moment equilibrium at the mating edges of the walls including the two weld-bonded edges and the compatibility conditions at the spot-weld locations. This approach to analytical solution, described here for thin-walled beam shells of rectangular cross-section, can be suitably adopted for more general cross-sections and joints along non-symmetric edges. A parametric study is undertaken to show the effect of aspect ratio of the beam shell, adhesive joint parameters, and the number of spot welds on the elastic buckling loads and the natural frequencies. Such parametric studies can be of use to designers in arriving at an optimal joint configuration of weld-bonded beam shells from buckling and vibration considerations.