Challenge to Welding and Joining Technology for Applying Multi-material in Electric Vehicle Production

Advanced high strength steel,aluminum alloy and plastic materials are used in the right places for the purpose of reducing the weight of EV(electric vehicle)bodies and in-vehicle parts,and multi-material structures are advancing.Therefore,it is difficult to handle the welding and joining processes of automobile structures by the conventional arc welding and resistance spot welding,which have been applied to steel joining,and various joining processes are being applied depending on the material.Under above mentioned background,the authors have developed some unique joining processes for multi-materials that are used in the right place.This paper introduces the dissimilar metal joining between the galvanized steel and aluminum alloy by laser arc hybrid process,the metal/thermoplastic dissimilar material joining using laser process and the solid-state resistance spot joining process of advanced high strength steel for EV body structural parts.Moreover,the authors describe the high-speed plasma jet GTA(Gas Tungusten Arc)welding process of copper applied to electrical components such as motors.

Quasi-in-situ investigation into the microstructure and texture evolution of pure magnesium during friction stir welding

The quasi-in-situ microstructure and texture evolution along the real flow path of pure magnesium during friction stir welding were investigated.Five representative stages were involved from the base metal to the formation of the final stir zone.The material experienced compression,preheating,acceleration,deceleration,and subsequent annealing over the course of the welding process.A highly concentrated(0001)texture,denoted as''orientation convergence^,was initiated at the beginning of the acceleration stage(shearing deformation zone)in front of the tool.Both continuous and discontinuous dynamic recrystallization occurred simultaneously in the stir zone,and continuous dynamic recrystallization was determined to be the primary recrystallization mechanism.The marker material morphology and EBSD data were used to elucidate the in-situ evolution of the shear direction and shear plane along with the real flow path.

Influence of Flux and Sulfur on YAG Laser Welding

The influence of flux and sulfur content on YAG laser welding has been investigated, and the influencing factors and mechanism were discussed. The results show that both surface activating flux and surface active element S have fantastic effects on the YAG laser weld shape, that is to obviously increase the weld penetration and D/W ratio in various welding conditions. The mechanism is thought to be the change of surface tension temperature coefficient in weld pool, thus, the change of fluid flow paten in weld pool due to the flux and sulfur.

Impact Strength Analysis of Plate Panels with Welding-Induced Residual Stress and Deformation

The paper describes the simulation of impact loads applied on plate panels with welding-induced residual stresses and deformation (WSD). Numerical simulations using FEM are carried out to study the influence of welding-induced residual stresses and deformation on the impact strength of plate panels. Welding is simulated using a three dimensional thermal mechanical coupled finite element method. The welding stress and deformation are taken as the initial imperfections in the impact strength analysis and their influence on the behavior of plate panels subjected to impact loadings. The impact loadings from the three directions, the lateral direction and two in-plane directions of the plate panels are studied. Results show a certain reduction in the impact strength due to the existence of welding stress and deformation in the plate panels. It is found that the reduction of impact force is strongly influenced by the welding deformation and the impact directions in the plate panels. This reduction is more significant when the impact force is in the lateral direction.

Effects of weld reinforcement on tensile behavior and mechanical properties of 2219-T87 aluminum alloy TIG welded joints

Tungsten inert gas （TIG） welded joints for 2219-T87 aluminum alloy are often used in the fuel tanks of large launch vehicles. Because of the massive loads these vehicles carry, dealing with weld reinforcement on TIG joints represents an important issue in their manufacturing and strength evaluation. Experimental and numerical simulation methods were used to investigate the effects of weld toe shape and weld toe position on the tensile behavior and mechanical properties of these joints. The simulation results indicated that the relative difference in elongation could be as large as 96.9% caused by the difference in weld toe shape. The joints with weld toes located in the weld metal or in the partially melted zone （PMZ） exhibited larger elongation than joints with weld toes located at the juncture of the weld metal and the PMZ.

Determination of local constitutive behavior and simulation on tensile test of 2219-T87 aluminum alloy GTAW joints

The local and global mechanical responses of gas tungsten arc welds（GTAW） of a 2219-T87 aluminum alloy were investigated with experiment and numerical simulation.Digital image correlation（DIC） was used to access the local strain fields in transversely loaded welds and to determine the local stress-strain curves of various regions in the joint.The results show that the DIC method is efficient to acquire the local stress-strain curves but the curves of harder regions are incomplete because the stress and strain ranges are limited by the weakest region.With appropriate extrapolation,the complete local stress-strain curves were acquired and proved to be effective to predict the tensile behavior of the welded joint.During the tensile process,the fracture initiates from the weld toes owing to their plastic strain concentrations and then propagates along the fusion line,finally propagates into the partially melted zone（PMZ）.

An in-situ study of static recrystallization in Mg using high temperature EBSD

It has been a common method to improve the mechanical properties of metals by manipulating their microstructures via static recrystallization,i.e.,through heat treatment.Therefore,the knowledge of recrystallization and grain growth is critical to the success of the technique.In the present work,by using in-situ high temperature EBSD,the mechanisms that control recrystallization and grain growth of an extruded pure Mg were studied.The experimental results revealed that the grains of priority for dynamic recrystallization exhibit fading competitiveness under static recrystallization.It is also found that grain boundary movement or grain growth is likely to show an inverse energy gradient effect,i.e.,low energy grains tend to swallow or grow into high energy grains,and grain boundaries of close to 30°exhibit superior growth advantage to others.Another finding is that{10-12}tensile twin boundaries are sites of hardly observed for recrystallization,and are finally swallowed by adjacent recrystallized grains.The above findings may give comprehensive insights of static recrystallization and grain growth of Mg,and may guide the design of advanced materials processing in microstructural engineering.

Effect of Ca addition on the microstructure and the mechanical properties of asymmetric double-sided friction stir welded AZ61 magnesium alloy

The effects of 2%Ca addition on the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the asymmetric double-sided friction stir welded magnesium alloy AZ61 were investigated.Compared to the Ca-free AZ61magnesium alloy,the addition of 2%Ca significantly refines the grains in the stir zone after welding.Due to the existence of thermally stable Al2Ca particles,there is no noticeable change in the grain size in the stir zone regardless of the welding heat input.The electron backscattered diffraction analysis at the center of the stir zone confirmed the significant deterioration of the(0001)texture strength from the addition of 2%Ca.The tensile test of the joint suggested that the addition of 2%Ca provides stable tensile properties to the joint regardless of the welding parameters.The critical(0001)texture strength that determines the ultimate tensile strength decreased from 20 to 15 by the Ca addition.The addition of Ca enhanced the deterioration of the plastic elongation when the(0001)texture strength increased.

Online Monitoring of Welding Status Based on a DBN Model During Laser Welding

In this research,an auxiliary illumination visual sensor system,an ultraviolet/visible(UVV)band visual sensor system(with a wavelength less than 780 nm),a spectrometer,and a photodiode are employed to capture insights into the high-power disc laser welding process.The features of the visible optical light signal and the reflected laser light signal are extracted by decomposing the original signal captured by the photodiode via the wavelet packet decomposition(WPD)method.The captured signals of the spectrometer mainly have a wavelength of 400-900 nm,and are divided into 25 sub-bands to extract the spectrum features by statistical methods.The features of the plume and spatters are acquired by images captured by the UVV visual sensor system,and the features of the keyhole are extracted from images captured by the auxiliary illumination visual sensor system.Based on these real-time quantized features of the welding process,a deep belief network(DBN)is established to monitor the welding status.A genetic algorithm is applied to optimize the parameters of the proposed DBN model.The established DBN model shows higher accuracy and robustness in monitoring welding status in comparison with a traditional back-propagation neural network(BPNN)model.The effectiveness and generalization ability of the proposed DBN are validated by three additional experiments with different welding parameters.

YAG laser welding with surface activating flux

YAG laser welding with surface activating flux has been investigated, and the influencing factors and mechanism are discussed. The results show that both surface activating flux and surface active element S have fantastic effects on the YAG laser weld shape, that is to obviously increase the weld penetration and D/W ratio in various welding conditions. The mechanism is thought to be the change of weld pool surface tension temperature coefficient, thus, the change of fluid flow pattern in weld pool due to the flux.

Study of Dynamic Features of Surface Plasma in High-Power Disk Laser Welding

High-speed photography was used to obtain the dynamic changes in the surface plasma during a high-power disk laser welding process. A color space clustering algorithm to extract the edge information of the surface plasma region was developed in order to improve the accuracy of image processing. With a comparative analysis of the plasma features, i.e., area and height, and the characteristics of the welded seam, the relationship between the surface plasma and the stability of the laser welding process was characterized, which provides a basic understanding for the real-time monitoring of laser welding.

Comparative study on evaluation of tendon force for welding distortion prediction in thin plate fabrication

Tendon force is an essential concept to predict welding distortion such as longitudinal shrinkage and welding induced buckling in thin plate fabrication. In this study,three approaches with experimental,theoretical and computational analysis,are examined to evaluate the magnitude of tendon force. In detail,inherent deformation theory is introduced first,the theoretical analysis to obtain the inherent strain solution is also reviewed; and then analytical solution for tendon force is achieved. Also,the theory of FE analysis for welding is introduced and implemented in a computation to obtain the transient temperature distribution,plastic strain,residual stress and welding distortion in a bead-on-plate welded joint with 2. 28 mm in thickness. The longitudinal displacement is employed to evaluate tendon force directly,and these computed inherent strain and inherent stress can also be employed to evaluate tendon force by integration approach later. All the evaluated magnitudes of tendon force have a good agreement with each other.

Time Dependant Weld Shape in Ar-O_2 Shielded Stationary GTA Welding

The stationary gas tungsten arc welding （GTA） is carried out on SUS304 stainless steel under Ar-0.1%O2 and Ar-0.3%O2 mixed shielding to observe the evolution of the molten pool and investigate the role of Marangoni convection on the weld shape. After welding, the oxygen content in the weld metal was measured by using an oxygen/nitrogen analyzer. Small addition of oxygen to the argon based shielding gas can effectively adjust the weld pool oxygen content. Oxygen plays an important role as an surface active element in determining the pattern of Marangoni convection in the stainless steel weld pool. When the weld metal oxygen content is over the critical value, 0.01 wt pct, corresponding to the Ar-0.3%O2 mixed shielding gas, the Marangoni convection changes from outward to inward direction and the weld shape dramatically changes from wide shallow shape to narrow deep shape.

Development of Evaluation Technique of GMAW Welding Quality Based on Statistical Analysis

Nondestructive techniques for appraising gas metal arc welding（GMAW） faults plays a very important role in on-line quality controllability and prediction of the GMAW process. On-line welding quality controllability and prediction have several disadvantages such as high cost, low efficiency, complication and greatly being affected by the environment. An enhanced, efficient evaluation technique for evaluating welding faults based on Mahalanobis distance（MD） and normal distribution is presented. In addition, a new piece of equipment, designated the weld quality tester（WQT）, is developed based on the proposed evaluation technique. MD is superior to other multidimensional distances such as Euclidean distance because the covariance matrix used for calculating MD takes into account correlations in the data and scaling. The values of MD obtained from welding current and arc voltage are assumed to follow a normal distribution. The normal distribution has two parameters： the meanm and standard deviations of the data. In the proposed evaluation technique used by the WQT, values of MD located in the range from zero tom＋3s are regarded as “good”. Two experiments which involve changing the flow of shielding gas and smearing paint on the surface of the substrate are conducted in order to verify the sensitivity of the proposed evaluation technique and the feasibility of using WQT. The experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of the WQT for evaluating welding quality. The proposed technique can be applied to implement the on-line welding quality controllability and prediction, which is of great importance to design some novel equipment for weld quality detection.

Correlations between IMC thickness and three factors in Sn-3Ag-0.5Cu alloy system

The effects of Ni content, soldering temperature and time on the IMC thickness in Sn-3Ag-0.5Cu and Sn-3Ag-0.5Cu-0.2Co alloys were researched using uniform design method and computer programs. For each alloy, the factors were divided into three levels in the experiment. Two correlative equations are given by regression. They indicate that the effects of three factors on the function are in the mutual and quadratic forms. And the analysis of variance shows the equations are sound and meaningful. Using the equations, it is easy to search, predict and control the IMC thickness. The existence of element Co accelerates the crystallization and growing up of IMC.

Effect of the processing route on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of superlight Mg-9Li-1Zn alloy via friction stir processing

In this study, the effect of the processing route using a friction stir processing(FSP) method on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of a Mg-9Li-1Zn alloy was systematically investigated. In the FSP method, the odd-numbered(1st and 3rd) process directions and even-numbered(2nd and 4th) passes were alternated to distribute the strain throughout the whole processed zone uniformly. Consequently, the processed zone had a much more uniform microstructure and hardness distribution than the processed zone obtained using the conventional FSP method. Using this method, the grain size of a Mg-9Li-1Zn sheet alloy was refined from ~31 μm to ~0.21 μm with uniformly distributedα and β phases. The processed alloy exhibited a high strength-ductility synergy with an ultimate tensile strength(UTS) of 220.1 MPa and total elongation of 70.0% at a strain rate of 10^(-3)s^(-1), overwhelmingly higher than those of the base metal, 155.6 MPa in UTS and 36.0%in elongation. The in-situ SEM-DIC analysis and TEM observation demonstrated that such an outstanding ductility with moderate strength is caused by grain boundary sliding, the dominant deformation mechanism of the ultra-fine-grained sample after FSP. The processing route with reverse processing direction was proven to be efficient in producing the ultrafine grain size microstructure and improving the mechanical properties of superlight Mg-9Li-1Zn alloy.

Analysis of Laser-Induced Plume During Disk Laser Welding at Different Speeds

During high power disk laser welding, the high-speed photography was used to measure the dynamic images of the laser-induced plume at different laser welding speeds. Various plume features （area, height and brightness） were extracted from the images by the color space clustering algorithm. Combined with observation on the surface and the cross sections of welding samples, the effect of welding speed on welding stability was analyzed. From the experimental results, it was found that these features of plume could reflect the welding state. Thus changes of the plume features corresponded to different welding speeds, which was helpful for monitoring the laser welding stability.

Interfacial reaction and growth behavior of reaction layer of Si_3N_4/Si_3N_4 joint brazed by Cu-Zn-Ti filler alloy

Si3N4 ceramic was jointed to itself using a filler alloy of Cu-Zn-Ti by the reaction between Ti and Si3N4. The microstructure of the interface in the joint is found to be Si3N4 ceramic/TiN reaction layer/Ti5Si3 reaction layer. The grain size of the TiN and Ti5Si3 reaction layer is 0.1μm and 1-2μm, respectively. There is no crystal orientation relationship between TiN reaction layer and Si3N4 ceramic or Ti5Si3 reaction layer. The kinetic equation for calculating the thickness of the reaction layer was obtained. When a （CuZn）85Ti15 alloy is used as the filler alloy, the apparent activation energy of the growth of the reaction layer is 201.69kJ/mol.

A Comparative Study of Friction Self-Piercing Riveting and Self-Piercing Riveting of Aluminum Alloy AA5182-O

In this paper,self-piercing riveting(SPR)and friction self-piercing riveting(F-SPR)processes were employed to join aluminum alloy AA5182-O sheets.Parallel studies were carried out to compare the two processes in terms of joint macrogeometry,tooling force,microhardness,quasi-static mechanical performance,and fatigue behavior.The results indicate that the F-SPR process formed both rivet–sheet interlocking and sheet–sheet solid-state bonding,whereas the SPR process only contained rivet–sheet interlocking.For the same rivet flaring,the F-SPR process required 63%less tooling force than the SPR process because of the softening effect of frictional heat and the lower rivet hardness of F-SPR.The decrease in the switch depth of the F-SPR resulted in more hardening of the aluminum alloy surrounding the rivet.The higher hardness of aluminum and formation of solid-state bonding enhanced the F-SPR joint stiffness under lap-shear loading,which contributed to the higher quasi-static lap-shear strength and longer fatigue life compared to those of the SPR joints.

Rupture locations of friction stir welded joints of AA2017-T351 and AA6061-T6 aluminum alloys

The tensile rupture locations of friction stir welded joints of AA2017-T351 and AA6061-T6 aluminum alloys were examined. The experiments show that the rupture locations of the joints are different for the two aluminum alloys, which are influenced by the welding parameters. When the joints are free of welding defects, the AA2017-T351 joints are ruptured in the weld nugget adjacent to the thermo-mechanically affected zone on the advancing side and the rupture surfaces appear as oval contours of the weld nugget, while the AA6061-T6 joints are ruptured in the heat affected zone on the retreating side and the rupture surfaces are inclined at a certain degree to the bottom surfaces of the joints. When welding defects are present in the joints, the AA2017-T351 joints are ruptured in the weld center, while the AA6061-T6 joints are ruptured on the retreating side near the weld center. The rupture locations of the joints are dependent on the internal structures of the joints and can be explained through them.