INFLUENCE OF WELDING PARAMETERS ON CHARACTERISTICS OF RESISTANCE SPOT ALUMINIUM WELDS

Abstract

The use of aluminium in manufacturing has become more prevalent in recent years because its lightweight and other attributes make it as an attractive alternative to steel. In fact the aluminium welding market is expected to grow at a rate of 5.5.% annually based primarily on the assumption that the automotive industry will continue to increase its use of aluminium. Resistance spot welding of aluminium requires certain precautions as higher thermal & electrical conductivities of aluminium and its oxide forming tendency poses specific problems. From the literature, it has been found that surface cleaning prior to welding is one of the critical aspects apart from selection of various welding parameters to obtain sound and flawless welds of aluminum sheets by RSW. To evaluate the characteristics of resistance spot aluminium welds, we perform various tests like tensile-shear test, cross-tension test, fatigue test, macroetch test and last but not the least, the microetch test. In this way we find influence of welding parameters on various properties like tensile-shear strength, cross tension strength, fatigue life, nugget diameter, hardness of nugget and HAZ and electrode indentation