Cameron Jeffrey Tolton

Background:

I began working towards my MASc after completing my BASc in Mechanical Engineering here at the University of Waterloo in 2017. Under the supervision of Prof. Michael Worswick I am working on developing a new specimen design for testing group spot weld failure. My work focuses on characterizing and modeling spot weld in die-quenched UHSS materials. Numerical models are created to aid vehicle designers through powerful simulation software such as LS-DYNA to build safe and fuel-efficient vehicles. As the base metal strength and ductility improves there is more emphasis on understanding the strength of the joints used to construct a vehicle with these materials and how joint failure affects the overall structure behaviour in a crash scenario. Single spot weld tests are used to characterize the strength of the joint under various loading conditions and calibrate a numerical spot weld model. To validate the numerical models, the model needs to be able to accurately predict the results of component level testing that incorporates multiple spot welds interacting together as the structure deforms. Previous work has begun developing new group weld specimens for spot weld model validation and I am further working on this, towards the goal of building accurate and reliable spot weld models that are used in full vehicle simulations.

Research Interests:

• Spot weld finite element modelling for crash analysis
• Spot weld failure characterization
• Die-quenched UHSS processing