• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.239-239
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• 2000

Automobile manufacturers have employed resistance spot welding(RSW) to join steel sheets for structural rigidity o automobile body. Driven by the need to reduce weight and fuel consumption, car companies have been evaluating aluminum intensive vehicles(AIVs) as a way to reduce vehicle weight without downsizing. During the transition from all steel-construction vehicle body to aluminum intensive body, joining aluminum to steel sheets emerges as a serious contender in automobile body. This paper deals with application of transition material to RSW aluminum to steel. Placing transition material insert between the aluminum/steel interface was found very effective to overcome incompatibility between aluminum and steel. Use of transition insert allows for two separate weld muggets to be formed in their respective aluminum/ aluminum and steel/ steel interfaces. This RSW process was monitored with the aid of dynamic resistance sampling. Typical patterns in sampled dynamic resistance curves indicated formation of sound nugget. (Received February 28, 2000)

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.112-118
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• 2000

Automobile manufacturers have employed resistance spot welding(RSW) to join steel sheets for structural rigidity of automobile body. Driven by the need to reduce weight and fuel consumption, car companies have been evaluating aluminum intensive vehicles(AIVs) as a way to reduce vehicle weight without downsizing. During the transition from all steel-construction vehicle body to aluminum intensive body, joining aluminum to steel sheets emerges as a serious contender in automobile body. This paper deals with application of transition material to RSW aluminum to steel. Placing transition material insert between the aluminum/steel interface was found very effective to overcome incompatibility between aluminum and steel. Use of transition insert allows for two separate weld nuggets to be formal in their respective aluminum/aluminum and steel/steel interfaces. This RSW process was monitored with the aid of dynamic resistance sampling. Typical patterns in sampled dynamic resistance curves indicated formation of sound nugget.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.25-29
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• 2005

Steel has been mainly used in the automotive industry, because of good mechanical properties, weldability and so on. However, there has been increase in using aluminum to reduce the weight of vehicle. This leads to improve fuel efficiency and to reduce air pollution. A steel-aluminum hybrid body structure is recently used not only to reduce the weight of vehicle but also to increase safety. In this paper, the laser beam joining method is suggested to join steel and aluminum. To avoid making brittle intermetallic compounds(IMC) that reduce mechanical properties of the joint area, only aluminum is melted by laser irradiation and wetted on the steel surface. The brittle IMC layer is formed with small thickness at the interface between steel and aluminum. By controlling the process parameters, brittle IMC layer thickness is suppressed under 10 micrometers which is a criterion to maintain good mechanical properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.33-38
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• 2002

Nowdays, related with vehicle weight reduction, many automotive maker are trying to develop spaceframe. If aluminum member and steel member are applied together in constructing spaceframe, there will be many advantages in aspect of inclosing strength and saving weight of automotive. In this case, joining method of aluminum and steel members has to be proposed. For this method, electomagnetic joining has many advantages compared to welding. In this paper, joining of aluminum tube and steel tube using eletomagnetic pressure was studied and strength of joint was evaluated through commission test.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 2005

Auto industry has employed resistance spot welding(RSW) to join steel sheets for structural rigidity of automobile body. Driven by the need to reduce weight and fuel consumption, car companies have been evaluating aluminum intensive vehicles(AIVs) as a way to reduce vehicle weight without downsizing. During the transition from all steel-construction vehicle body to aluminum intensive body, joining aluminum to steel sheets emerges as a serious contender in automobile body. This paper deals with application of transition material to RSW aluminum to steel. Placing transition material insert between the aluminum/steel interface was found very effective to overcome physical incompatibility between aluminum and steel. Use of transition insert allows for two separate weld nuggets to be formed in their respective aluminum/aluminum and steel/steel interfaces. This RSW processes was monitored with the aid of dynamic resistance sampling. Typical patterns in sampled dynamic resistance curves indicated formation of sound nugget. The growth of two separate nuggets was examined by micro-cross section test.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.127-140
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• 1994

Resistance spot welding has been widely used in the sheet metal joining processes because of its high productivity and convenience. In the resistance spot welding processes the size of molten nugget is a criterion to assess weld quality. Many research have founded on measuring weld nugget size at the same time monitoring welding process parameters such as dynamic resistance and electrode movement. With increasing demand of energy saving, many efforts were made to employ aluminum alloys that are lighter than steel and have relatively equivalent strength to steel in the automobile industry. In this paper, spot weldability of aluminum alloys for various welding conditions were examined by series of experiments. One of the 6000 series (Mg-Si) aluminum alloy, 6383-T4 was chosen, which is currently considered as a substitute for the galvanized steel. Dynamic resistance, electrode movement and corresponding nugget size were observed and compared to the case of steel. Finally, resistance spot welding of dissimilar material (galvanized steel-aluminum alloy) was attempted.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.30-36
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• 2005

In this part, thermal finite element analysis(FEA) is conducted for the experiments in part 1. The molten area of base metals are analyzed by FEA results and compared with experimental ones. Temperature data from FEA results are used to calculate the IMC layer thickness analytically at the interface. IMC layer is established as a function of time and temperature when there is an interaction between solid steel and molten aluminum. The IMC layer thickness is obtained by cumulative computations using the time-temperature data from FEA results.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.152-155
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• 2003

The automotive industry is currently trying to develop light- weight vehicle for both improvement of fuel efficiency and reduction of environmental pollution. For the reduction of vehicle weight, the substitution of aluminum for steel has been increased. However, the change of material causes a significant problem with respect to the method of joining. In this paper, strength of several aluminum joining methods such as spot welding, metal insert gas(MIG) welding, adhesive bonding was evaluated by performing lap test.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.37-42
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• 2024

Friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is a solid-state joining process and a rapidly growing dissimilar material welding technology for joining metallic alloys in the automotive industry. Welding tool shape and process conditions must be appropriately controlled to obtain high bonding characteristics. In this study, FSSW is performed on dissimilar materials AA5052-H32 aluminum alloy sheet and SPRC440 steel sheet, and the influence of the shape of joining tool and tool insertion depth during joining is investigated. A new intermetallic compound is produced at the aluminum and steel sheets joint. When the insertion depth of the tool is insufficient, the intermetallic compound between the two sheets did not form uniformly. As the insertion depth increased, the intermetallic compound layer become uniform and continuous. The joint specimen shows higher values of tensile shear load as the diameter and insertion depth of the tool increase. This shows that the uniform formation of the intermetallic compound strengthens the bonding force between the joining specimens and increases the tensile shear load.