In this article, the influence of electrode tip diameter is investigated for spot welded duplex stainless steel (DSS). Electrode tip diameter and welding current are considered as the major influencing parameters and their values are varied within the feasible range, suitable for 0.8 mm thick sheet, whereas other important parameters such as welding time and electrode force are kept constant. DSS with the chosen thickness range is now becoming a useful material in automotive body-in-white applications and in future it will become one of the key materials replacing the existing materials and hence research outcome of the present work may be beneficial from application view point. In this work, the spot welding quality is inspected through metallurgical aspects (microstructure and microhardness), physical aspects (nugget diameter and electrode indentation), mechanical performance (tensile shear strength [TSS]) and failure mode. The obtained result shows that smaller electrode tip diameter limits nugget diameter due to expulsion phenomena and increases electrode indentation due to higher current intensity. TSS decreases with increase in electrode tip diameter for the same welding current but maximum TSS obtained for particular electrode tip diameter increases with increase in electrode tip diameter up to a specific limit and then it remains constant.
<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">A lightweight multi-material combination of steel and aluminium alloy (Al) is becoming a novel approach towards environmentally sustainable transport systems. Studies show that 10% reduction of vehicle weight results into 3-7% reduction in specific fuel consumption in IC engines and a 13.7% improvement in electric range for electric vehicles. However, dissimilar welding of Al/steel is a key challenge because of incompatible thermo-physical properties (melting point, thermal conductivity, and coefficient of thermal expansion) and low miscibility between Al and steel. The formation of brittle and hard Al-steel intermetallic compound (IMC) at the joint interface is the major concern for dissimilar welding of Al/steel. In this work, efforts are made to check the feasibility of Ni interlayer to control IMC formation at the interface of Al/steel dissimilar welded joint. Resistance spot welding is used to join low carbon steel CR01 and Al AA6061-T6 with pure Ni interlayer. Microstructure and IMC morphology of welded joints are investigated by optical and scanning electron microscope. The mechanical performance of welded joints is evaluated by tensile shear strength (TSS), failure energy and failure mode. Ni-interlayer does not have major effect on physical aspects of weld such as electrode indentation, Al thinning and steel bulging height. Two separate interfaces namely, Ni/Al and Ni/steel are formed with Ni interlayer. Higher amount of expulsion is taken place at the Ni/Al interface, resulting into lower TSS for dissimilar welding with Ni-interlayer compared to without interlayer.</div></div>
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.