Abstract
One of the principle issues facing automobile manufacturers today is the production of vehicles which meet the ever greater demand for reliability while being light and economical with short times to market. Today, a reasonable level of lightness has been attained in car bodies and chassis and further improvements in this direction necessarily lie in the redefinition of calculation and design methodologies, which must be readily applicable to the design process. In this context, the present paper reports the definition of an alternative methodology for fatigue design of the welded areas around the suspension attachments.