Fatigue lives of friction stir spot welds in aluminum 6061-T6 sheets

The fatigue lives of friction stir spot welds in aluminum 6061-T6 lap-shear specimens under cyclic loading conditions are investigated in this paper. The paths of fatigue cracks near friction stir spot welds in lap-shear specimens are first examined. The experimental observations suggest that under cyclic loading conditions, the fatigue crack is initiated near the possible original notch tip in the stir zone and propagates along the circumference of the nugget, then through the sheet thickness and finally grows in the width direction to cause final fracture. A fatigue crack growth model based on the Paris law for crack propagation and the local stress intensity factors for kinked cracks is then adopted to predict the fatigue lives of friction stir spot welds. The global and local stress intensity factors are used to estimate the local stress intensity factors of kinked cracks with experimentally determined kink angles. The results indicate that the fatigue life predictions based on the Paris law and the local stress intensity factors as functions of the kink length agree well with the experimental results.