Effects of key parameters on magnetic pulse welding of 5A02 tube and SS304 tube

Abstract

The combination of collision velocity and angle plays a dominant role for the magnetic pulse welding (MPW) of dissimilar metals. During the MPW process of tubes, the combination depends on the key parameters including radial gap, relative lap length (RLL), and discharge voltage. In this work, the numerical simulations are performed to investigate the effects of RLL on the collision velocity and angle. MPW experiments of 5A02 aluminum tube and SS304 steel tube are conducted, and then, peeling tests and compression shear tests for the joints are carried out respectively to study the influence of these key parameters on the MPW joint quality. The simulation results reveal that the impact velocity declines with the enlargement of RLL but increases with the growth of radial gap and discharge voltage. And the collision angle decreases first sharply and then increases gently with the increase of RLL. And the angle also increases with the increasing radial gap but the discharge voltage seems to be less important. Comprehensively, it is found that there exists an optimum value 7/10 for RLL, 1.75 mm for the radial gap, and 16 kV for the discharge voltage to obtain the joints of good quality in this paper, whose shear strength’s maximum is up to 48.9 MPa. And the relationship between the radial gap and the voltage is found that the smaller the radial gap, the smaller the corresponding proper voltage for a good joint under the same experimental conditions.