Influence of electrode tip diameter on metallurgical and mechanical aspects of spot welded duplex stainless steel

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• resistance spot welding
• duplex stainless steel
• electrode tip diameter
• welding current
• tensile shear strength
• nugget diameter