Spot welding of steel and aluminum using insert sheet
- and others
Automobile industries have been increasingly interested in the use of aluminum and thus joining of steel and aluminum becomes of importance. The joining of the two types of metal raises a problem of brittle welds caused by the formation of intermetallic compounds. The authors solved the problem by using an insert sheet. This paper deals with the resistance spot welding of steel and aluminum sheets using insert sheets. The insert sheet used in the present development was a steel/aluminum clad sheet of the 0.8 mm thickness with 50% steel and 50% aluminum. The clad sheet was produced by warm rolling of steel and aluminum with a direct resistance heating process. Steel to be warm rolled was of EDDQ of the 0.4 mm thickness and aluminum was of JIS A1050 of 0.6 mm thickness. The mechanical properties of the insert clad sheets were in between those of the steel sheets and the aluminum sheets, while the clad sheets showed much better formability than the aluminum sheets. Resistance spot welding was conducted for 0.8 mm thick EDDQ steel sheets and 1.0 mm thick aluminum alloy (AL-5.5%Mg) sheets under the welding force of 1.96 kN, welding current ranging between 4.2 and 20.1 kA, and welding time from 0.5 to 10 cycles. The steel was spot welded to the steel side of the insert sheet while the aluminum was welded to the aluminum side. What the authors investigated were the applicable welding current range, nugget diameter, tensile shear strength, U-tension strength, and macro- and microstructures. In conclusion, steel sheets can be spot welded to aluminum sheets without difficulty by using clad sheets as insert materials while the strength level of the dissimilar metal spot welds is close to that of aluminum joints.
- OSTI ID:
- 115721
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9404233--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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