• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.145-153
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• 2018

Magnesium material could be widely used in the automotive industry because of its high strength to weight ratio, but the electric resistance spot welding process of magnesium sheets is difficult because of its low electric resistance and high thermal conduction and thermal expansion. For this reason, an electric resistance surface friction spot welding process using rotating dies is suggested for the spot welding of magnesium metal sheets. This welding method can be characterized by three heating methods: (1) electric resistance heating on contacted surface, (2) surface friction heating by rotating dies, and (3) thermal conduction heating from heated steel electrodes, for the fusion of metal at the interfacial zone between the two magnesium sheets. This welding process also has variables to explore, such as welding currents, diameters of the steel electrode, and rotating dies. It was found that the welding strength could reach industrial requirements by applying a welding current of 11.0kA, with steel electrodes of 12mm diameter, with rotating dies of 4.4 mm diameter, under the condition of a revolution speed of 1200rpm of rotating dies, for the surface friction spot welding process of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets of 1.4mm thickness.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

In this study, an electric resistance dual-spot welding process using a copper electrode inserted in a heating electrode is suggested for the spot welding of AZ31 magnesium sheets. This spot-welding process involves two heating methods for welding at the interfacial zone between the magnesium sheets, one of which is the heating method by thermal conduction from the heating electrode heated by the welding current induced to the steel electrode, and the other heating method uses the electric resistance between the contacted surfaces of the two sheets by the welding current induced to the copper electrode. This welding process includes the welding variables, such as the current induced in the heating electrode and the copper electrode, and the outer diameters of the heating electrode. This is because the heat conducted from the heating electrode can be maintained at a higher temperature in the welding zone, which has a slow cooling effect on the nugget of the melted metal after the welding step. The pressure exerted during the pressing of the magnesium sheets by the heating electrode can be increased around the nugget zone at the spot-welding zone. Thus, it not only reduces the warping effect of the elastoplastic deformation of sheets, but also the corona bond can make it less prone to cracking at the welded zone, thereby reducing the number of nuggets expelled out of the corona bond. In conclusion, it was known that an electric resistance dual spot welding process using the copper electrode inserted in the heating electrode can improve the welding properties in the electric resistance spot welding process of AZ31 magnesium sheets.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.93-100
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• 2021

Copper sheets has been used widely in electric and electron industry fields because they have good electric and heat conduction property of the material. And, in order to bond copper material, a kind of soldering process is generally used. But, because it is difficult to bond by soldering between overlapped thin copper sheets, so, another kind of brazing bonding process can be used in that case. But, because the brazing process needs wide bonding area, it needs heat treatment process in electric furnace. Generally, for spot welding of sheets, a conventional electric Resistance Spot Welding process(RSW) has been used, it has welding characteristics using contact resistance heating induced by electric current flow between sheets. But, because copper sheets has the low electric resistance, it is difficult to weld by electric resistance spot welding. So, in this study, an electric Resistance heated Surface Friction Spot Welding process(RSFSW) is suggested and is testified for the spot welding ability of thin copper sheets. It is known from the experimental results and simulation that the suggested spot welding process will be able to improve the spot welding ability of copper sheets by the combined three kinds of heating generated by surface friction by rotating pin, and conducted from heated steel electrode, and generated by contact resistance of electricity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.163-168
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• 1994

Zinc coated steel sheets have been widely used in automotive industry. High power laser welding has been used as an excellent welding means for thin sheets. The welding residual stress, which was brought in laser welding, causes making weak the mechanical strength. The purpose of this study is to get the residual stress distribution in various laser welding condition by FEM and verify the results by X-Ray diffraction. Welding residual stresses have been calculated by thermal elasto-plastic analysis using finite element method. Form the results, it can be known that the laser welding condition affects to distribution of the residual stress.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.95-101
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• 2002

After high power lasers are avaliable in the commercial market, the number of applications of the laser welding has been increased in manufacturing industries. Although the tailored blank laser welding of butt jointed steel sheets is well known recently in the automotive industries, the lap joint laser welding is a new technology to the automotive manufacturing people as well as the design people. But the deep penetration laser welding seems to be preferred to the partial penetration welding for the lap joint welding in the automotive manufacturers because the partial penetration is a serious deflect for the butt joint. In this study, the feasibility of partial penetration welding fur the lap joint $CO_2$ laser welding was studied fur the 1mm thick 390MPa high strength steel sheets for automotive bodies. The process window of the lap joint partial penetration welding was obtained from experiments with the gap size and the welding speed as process parameters. The partial penetration welding was found excellent on the basis of the tensile shear strength and sectional geometry. The bead width, input energy Per volume, tensile-shear strength, deformation energy and the sectional geometries after tensile-shear tests of partial penetration welded specimens are compared with those of full penetration welded specimens with a series of gaps and welding speeds.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.99-109
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• 2022

In this study, an electric resistance-heated surface friction spot-welding process was proposed and tested for the spot-welding ability of copper and aluminum dissimilar metal sheets using electric resistance heating and surface friction heating. This process has welding variables, such as the current value, energizing cycles, rotational speed, and friction time. The current value and energizing cycle can affect the resistance heat, and the rotational speed of the rotating pin and friction time influence frictional heat generation. Resistance heating before friction heating has a preheating effect on the Cu-Al contact interface and a positive effect on preventing friction heat loss during the friction stage. However, because resistance preheating can soften the copper sheet and affect the contact stress and friction coefficient, it has difficulties that may adversely affect frictional heat generation. Therefore, the optimal combination of welding variables should be determined through simulations and experiments of the spot-welding process to determine the effects of electric resistance preheating on the suggested process. Through this procedure, it is known that the proposed spot-welding process can improve the welding quality during the spot welding of Cu-Al sheets.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.256-263
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• 2015

Electric resistance spot welding has been used to join overlapped steel sheets in automotive bodies. Recently to reduce weight in automotive vehicles, non-ferrous metals are being used or considered in car bodies for hoods, trunk lids, doors parts, etc. Various welding processes such as laser welding, self-piercing rivet, friction stir welding are being used. In the current study, a new electric resistance heated friction stir spot welding is suggested for the spot welding of non-ferrous metals. The welding method can be characterized by three uses of heat -- electric resistance heating, friction stir heating and conduction heating of steel electrodes -- for the fusion joining at the interfacial zone between the two sheets. The welding process has variables such as welding current, diameter of the steel electrodes, revolutions per minute (rpm) of the friction stir pin, and the insert depth of the stir pin. In order to obtain the optimal welding variables, which provide the best welding strength, many experiments were conducted. From the experiments, it was found that the welding strength could be reached to the required production value by using an electrode diameter of 10mm, a current of 7.6kA, a stirring speed of 400rpm, and an insert depth of 0.8mm for the electric resistance heated friction stir spot welding of 5052 aluminum 1.5mm sheets.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 1997

Spot welding is one of the important welding processes for the construction of thin metal sheet. Because of low investment cost, alternating welding current is widely applied for power source. Direct current type could be, however, recommened for high quality weldment. In this study, the effect of welding current type on the weldability and the electrode life in spot welding of aluminium alloy were investigated. Various welding tests were done by using three phase direct and alternating welding current, respectively. In spite of high variation of welding force, weld quality and electrode life with alternating welding current were shown better results than those with direct current for 2mm thick alumininum alloy sheets. This was due to excessive erosion of the positive electrode in direct welding current compared with the negative one. On the contrary to 2mm sheets, the welding parameters of alternating current for 1mm sheets must be carefully selected.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.46-50
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• 1996

Continuous wave $CO_2$ laser beam welding and formability of zinc coated steel sheets were investigated. First, optimal welding condition could be obtained in butt welding by using the data for heat input and welding velocity. The highest value of Erichsen test is 79.3% compare to that of base metal. Secondly, Formability of laser welds was investigated by using ball punch tester. Finally, the forming results of butt-welded sheets showed that the joining design was important to apply the laser welded blank in the automotive production.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.42-62
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• 1997

Resistance spot welding has been widely used in the sheet metal joining processes because of its high productivity and convenience. Recently, automobile industries are trying to replace partly steel sheets with aluminum alloy sheets. Among currently produced aluminum alloys, Al alloy sheets of Al-Mg-Si(6000 series) are being tested. Especially, 6000 series are the most probable substitute in view of strength and weldability. In this paper, an attempt was made to apply resistance spot welding to joining of dissimilar sheet metals (KS6383+SCPZn or KS6383+SHCP). An effort was made to balance heating rate in the Al alloy with that in the steel sheets by increasing electrode tip diameter. Although resistance spot welding of Al alloy sheet and sheet metals does not produce desirable nugget, it proved to have reasonable strength if optimal weld condition is found by tensile-shear strength and fatigue life test. Since spot weld joints in automobile are always experiencing repeated load, spot welding methodology proposed in this paper is found to be not suitable to automobile body manufacturing.