Joining of Dissimilar alloy Sheets (Al 6063&AISI 304) during Resistance Spot Welding Process: A Feasibility Study for Automotive industry

Abstract

Present design trends in automotive manufacture have shifted emphasis to alternative lightweight materials in order to achieve higher fuel efficiency and to bring down vehicle emission. Although some other joining techniques are more and more being used, spot welding still remains the primary joining method in automobile manufacturing so far. Spot welds for automotive applications should have a sufficiently large diameter, so that nugget pullout mode is the dominant failure mode. Interfacial mode is unacceptable due to its low load carrying and energy absorption capability. Strength tests with different static loading were performed in, to reveal the failure mechanisms for the lap-shear geometry and the cross-tension geometry. Based on the literature survey performed, venture into this work was amply motivated by the fact that a little research work has been conducted to joining of dissimilar materials like non ferrous to ferrous. Most of the research works concentrated on joining of different materials like steel to steel or aluminium alloy to aluminium alloy by resistance spot welding. In this work, an experimental study on the resistance spot weldability of aluminium alloy (Al 6063) and austenitic stainless steel (AISI304) sheets, which are lap joined by using a pedestal type resistance spot welding machine. Welding was conducted using a 45-deg truncated cone copper electrode with 10-mm face diameter. The weld nugget diameter, force estimation under lap shear test and T – peel test were investigated using digital type tensometer attached with capacitive displacement transducer (Mikrotech, Bangalore, Model: METM2000ER1). The results shows that joining of Al 6063 and AISI 304 thin sheets by RSW method are feasible for automotive structural joints where the loads are below 1000N act on them, it is observed that by increasing the spots per unit length, then the joint with standing strength to oppose failure is also increased linearly incase of interfacial failure mode and non linear for pullout failure mode.