• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.48-54
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• 2016

The use of Zn coated steel has increased in the automotive industry due to its excellent corrosion resistance. Conventionally the BIW(body-in-white) structure and the hang-on parts have been made of Zn coated steel and more recently Zn coated steel began to be applied in the chassis parts. During gas metal arc (GMA) welding of the chassis part, lap fillet joint used to be adopted but spatter generation and porosities are most important concerns. In the industrial applications, an intentional joint gap was made to avoid the weld defects but it is not easy to control the size of joint gap. In this research, gas tungsten arc (GTA) is combined with GMA welding where GTA precedes GMA. As pulsed arc was adopted as GMA, GTA was oscillated along the longitudinal direction by pulsing GMA, but the arc oscillation did not disturb the molten droplet transfer of GMA welding. By increasing the distance between GTA and GMA, the length of weld pool increased and porosity could be reduced. Moreover porosity in the welds was fully removed when the distance between two arcs was 15 mm.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.40-47
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• 2016

The Zn coating on automotive galvanized steel sheets can improve corrosion resistance. However, the boiling temperature of Zn is lower than the melting temperature of steel and it causes well-known spatter and porosity problem. One of most prominent solutions is a pretreatment of Zn coating by an additional welding arc prior to the main welding process. In this research, GTA and GMA are selected as heat sources for pretreatment and main welding processes, respectively. The authors suggested three possible mechanisms to reduce weld defects by the GTA pretreatment: (1) Formation of gap between the sheets; (2) Evaporation of Zn layer; (3) Oxidation of Zn layer. Among them, Zn Oxidation is the most important mechanism to reduce weld defects in the GTA-GMA hybrid process.