A theoretical study of electrical and thermal response in resistance spot welding

Journal Article · Thu Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1996 · Welding Journal

OSTI ID:282399

Na, S J; Park, S W ^[1]

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1. Korea Advanced Inst. of Science and Technology, Taejon (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Precision Engineering and Mechatronics

The effect of contact resistance including constriction and contamination resistance has been a major hurdle for the thermoelectrical analysis of the resistance spot welding process. In this paper, a simple model was suggested and used for calculating the electrical and thermal response of the resistance spot welding process to investigate the influence of contacting forces on the formation of weld nuggets. The electrode surface of the contact interface was assumed to be axisymmetric and its microasperities to have a trapezoidal cross-section. These microasperities were considered as the one-dimensional contact resistance elements in the finite element formulation. The contamination film was assumed to be a nonconducting oxide layer, which is very brittle, so that it is broken to some number of pieces when a contacting pressure is being applied. The crushed films were assumed to be distributed at regular intervals and to conserve their size and number during the welding process. The simulation results revealed that the proposed model can be successfully used to predict the effect of the contact resistance on the electrical and thermal response of the resistance spot welding process.

• OSTI ID: 282399
• Journal Information: Welding Journal, Journal Name: Welding Journal Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 75; ISSN 0043-2296; ISSN WEJUA3
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
METALS
RESISTANCE WELDING
TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION
THEORETICAL DATA
WELDED JOINTS