Abstract
In recent years, increasing automotive safety by improving crashworthiness has been a focal point in the automotive industry, employing high-strength steel such as press hardenable steel (PHS). In addition to the improved strength of individual parts in the body of the vehicle, the strength of the resistance-spot-welded joints of these parts is highly important to obtain a safe structure. In general, dimensions of weld nuggets are regarded as one of the criteria for the quality of spot-welded joints. In the presented research, a three-dimensional axisymmetric finite element model is developed to predict the nugget formation in resistance spot welding (RSW) of two types of PHS: the uncoated and AlSi-coated 1.8 mm boron steel after hot stamping. A fully coupled electro-thermo-mechanical analysis was conducted using the commercial software package Abaqus. The FE predicted weld nugget development is compared with experimental results. The computed weld nugget sizes show good agreement with experimental values.
Highlights
IntroductionIncreasing automotive safety for improving their crashworthiness while reducing vehicle weight to decrease their fuel consumption and air pollution has been a focal point of attention in recent years
The weld nugget size is often considered as a criterion for the quality and strength of spot-welded joints
An incrementally coupled electro-thermo-mechanical analysis was used to simulate the formation of resistance spot welding (RSW) joints on Press hardenable steels (PHS) in order to predict the nugget size of the weldment
Summary
Increasing automotive safety for improving their crashworthiness while reducing vehicle weight to decrease their fuel consumption and air pollution has been a focal point of attention in recent years. To this end, a wide range of high-strength steels have been employed [3,4]. Press hardenable steels (PHS), which are formed through hot stamping, are considered as one of the most applicable high-strength steels in the automotive industry. During the hot stamping process, the blank is first heated in an approximate temperature of 910 ◦ C for 6 min to become austenitized
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