Journal of Materials Processing Technology 209 (2009) 54755480

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

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Ultrasonic welding between mild steel sheet and AlMg alloy sheet
Takehiko Watanabe , Hideo Sakuyama, Atsushi Yanagisawa
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Ikarashi 2-nocho, Niigata 950-2181, Japan

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Ultrasonic welding between SS400 mild steel sheet and aluminum alloy sheet containing magnesium (A5052) was conducted. In this study, authors investigated the inuence of ultrasonic welding conditions on the mechanical properties and the interface microstructure of a joint, and the effect of insert metal was examined to improve the joint strength. The main results obtained in this study are as follows. It was possible to weld ultrasonically SS400 mild steel sheet to A5052 aluminum alloy sheet containing magnesium. The strength of the joints welded using various clamping forces and constant welding time of 1.0 s showed the maximum value at the clamping force of 588 N and decreased with the clamping force over 588 N because the excessively large clamping force reduced the frictional action at the interface. The strength of the joints welded using the constant clamping force of 588 N and various welding times showed the maximum value at the welding time of 2.5 s. However, the strength of the joint welded using the welding time of 3.0 s decreased due to the formation of Fe2 Al5 intermetallic compound at the interface. Using the insert metal of commercially pure aluminum, the joint strength was successfully improved and the strength of the welded using 3.0 s welding time was about three times as large as that of the joint without the insert metal. Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 9 January 2008 Received in revised form 30 April 2009 Accepted 2 May 2009 Keywords: Ultrasonic welding Mild steel sheet AlMg alloy sheet Joint strength Insert metal Improvement of joint strength

1. Introduction Energy saving and environmental preservation are important issues for us to be urgently resolved. Since reducing the weight of vehicles is one of the efcient countermeasures against them, the use of the combination of steel and aluminum alloy has been increasing in fabricating the vehicles. Under this situation, many trials to weld steel to aluminum alloy have been conducted. However, sound joints have not been produced so far, because hard and brittle intermetallic compounds were formed at the weld whenever steel was welded to aluminum by fusion welding. At present, the following bonding methods have been employed to produce the joint between steel and aluminum, that is to say, friction welding (Aritoshi and Okita, 2000), resistance spot welding (Watanabe et al., 2005), rolling (Kohno, 2000) and modied FSW (Watanabe and Takayama, 2003). However, the friction welding has the restriction in shape that at least one material to be welded should be circular in cross-section. The rolling has also shortcoming that it is applicable to only a thin plate. The modied FWS is a promising method to make a joint between steel and aluminum. However, we need to develop the other method such as ultrasonic welding to join them in the near future.

The ultrasonic welding has been thought to be one of the solidstate bonding methods and seems to be promising for joining steel to aluminum. However, there are few studies to join them by ultrasonically welding. In this study, authors tried to weld ultrasonically mild steel sheet to aluminum alloy sheet containing magnesium and investigated the effect of welding conditions on the mechanical properties and the interface microstructure of a joint. Furthermore, the effect of insert metal was investigated to improve the joint properties. 2. Materials and experimental procedure Sheets of 0.8 mm thick SS400 mild steel and 1.2 mm thick A5052H24 (Al2.84 at%Mg) aluminum alloy containing Mg (hereafter, A5052) were welded. The insert metal of commercially pure aluminum sheet A1050-24H (hereafter, A1050) with 1.2 mm thickness was used to investigate the effects on the joint performance. The ultimate tensile strengths of SS400 base metal, A5052 base metal and A1050 base metal were about 375 MPa, 250 MPa and 106 MPa, respectively. The shape and dimension of SS400 and A5052 was rectangular and 100 mm in length and 10 mm in width. The insert metal of A1050 was rectangular and 25 mm in length and 10 mm in width. The faying surface of the specimen was electrolytically polished and the average surface roughness of SS400 was about 0.58 m and those of A5052 and A1050 were about 0.34 m.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 25 262 7006; fax: +81 25 262 7006. E-mail address: twatanab@eng.niigata-u.ac.jp (T. Watanabe).

0924-0136/$ see front matter. Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2009.05.006

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Fig. 3. Relation between tensile load of a joint and clamping force.

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the apparatus for ultrasonic welding. Enlarged part of the specimens shows the location of a thermocouple to measure the interface temperature.

The output power and the vibration frequency of the ultrasonically welding machine were 2400 W and 15 kHz, respectively. The vibration amplitude was about 53 m (peak to peak at no loading). Fig. 1 shows schematically the setting of the welding specimens. The A5052 specimen was allocated to the upper horn side and was vibrated to the direction shown in Fig. 1. The clamping force and application duration of vibration (hereafter, welding time) were varied. The welded area was approximately 10 mm 10 mm. The welded specimen was processed into U-bent shape using a steel jig, as shown in Fig. 2, to evaluate the tensile strength of a joint. The ultimate load in the tensile test was dened as the tensile strength of a joint in this study. To estimate the temperature around the joint interface, a thermocouple with the diameter of 0.1 mm was welded at the edge of the SS400 specimen, as shown in the enlarged circle in Fig. 1. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. The effect of the clamping force on the joint strength 3.1.1. The change in tensile strength Fig. 3 shows the change of the joint strength when the clamping force was varied from 343 N to 1764 N under the constant weld-

ing time of 1.0 s. The joint strength welded using 343 N clamping force was low due to the insufcient frictional force at the interface. The joint welded using 588 N clamping force showed the maximum strength of about 412 N, followed by decreasing with the clamping force. The previous studies report that the excessively large clamping force seemed to generate large friction and suppress the relative motion at the faying interface, resulting in decreasing the joint strength (Hiraishi and Watanabe, 2003; Electric Industries Association of Japan, 1995). The similar phenomenon appears to occur in ultrasonically welding between SS400 and A5052. When the clamping forces larger than 882 N were used, it was frequently observed that not only the faying surface of A5052 adhered to the welding tip on a horn, but also fracture occurred in the A5052 specimen during welding. Fig. 4 shows the A5052 surface appearances of the horn side specimen after welding at the clamping forces of 588 N and 1175 N. The indentations made by the convex of the knurls on the welding tip are observed on the surface. The indentations made at 1176 N are larger than that at 588 N and are slightly expanded in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the vibration. These indentation appearances indicate that the slip occurred between the welding tip and the faying surface of the specimen, resulting in insufcient welding. It has been reported that the indentation size made by the welding tip was useful to estimate the relative motion between the faying surfaces (Hiraishi and Watanabe, 2003). Although it has been known that the shape of the knurls affects the joint efciency (Jahn et al., 2007), we have no discussions on this issue in this study, because all of the

Fig. 2. Schematic illustration for the tensile test of a joint.

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Fig. 4. The appearances of scratches on A5052 surface formed by a welding tip with pyramidal projections: (a) clamping force of 588 N and (b) clamping force of 1176 N.

Fig. 6. Fracture surface of SS400 (a). Photographs (b) and (c) are SEM micrographs of white part (b) and dark part (c) in the photograph of (a), respectively.

experiments were conducted using the welding tip with the same geometry. 3.1.2. The change of the specimen temperature during welding Fig. 5 shows the change in the temperature of SS400 specimen during welding when the welding time was changed from 0.1 s to 1.0 s using various clamping forces. The result indicates that the specimen temperature was below about 100 C using 343 N clamping force because the generation of frictional heat was insufcient, however, the specimen temperature increased up to about 400 C using the clamping forces of 588 N and 882 N, resulted in the larger joint strength. 3.1.3. The observation of SS400 fracture surface Fig. 6 shows the photograph and SEM micrographs of the fracture surface of SS400 in the joint welded using 588 N clamping force and 1.0 s welding time. The white-looking and black-looking regions are observed on the fracture surface in (a). The enlarged views of the

white-looking part (b) and the black-looking part (c) are shown in Fig. 6(b) and (c), respectively. In the fracture surface of (b), dimple pattern indicated by the symbol of W (welded region) and scratched pattern indicated by the symbol of S (scratched region) are observed. In the fracture surface of (c), the dimple pattern of W and at-looking region indicated by the symbol of EP (electrolytically polished region) are observed. The regions indicated by the symbols of W, S and EP stand for the region where the welding was completed, the region where faying surface was scraped in the vibration direction and the region where as-electrolytically polished surface remained, respectively. The area ratio of W region, S region and EP region on the fracture surface in the joint welded using various clamping forces are shown in Fig. 7. The area ratio was calculated using the linear analysis method on the microphotograph taken with the magnication of 1000. As shown in Fig. 7, the area of W region shows the maximum at 588 N clamping force and the change in the W region area corresponds well to the change in the joint tensile strength shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5. Temperatures of a specimen welded at various clamping forces.

Fig. 7. Area ratio of EP, S and W region in fracture surface of SS400 vs. clamping force.

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Fig. 11. Fracture surface of SS400 in the joint made under the conditions of 2.5 s welding time and 588 N clamping force.

Fig. 8. Relation between tensile load of a joint and welding time.

Fig. 9. Area ratio of EP, S and W region in fracture surface of SS400 vs. welding time.

time up to 2.5 s. However, it decreased at the welding time of 3.0 s. Fig. 9 shows the result of the measurement about the area ratio of EP, S and W region in the fracture surface of SS400. Although the area of W region increased with the welding time up to 3.0 s, the joint strength at 3.0 s welding time decreased as shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 10 shows the cross-sectional microstructure and SEM enlarged view of the center part of the joint welded using the 588 N clamping force and 3.0 s welding time. Band-like phase with about 1 m width is observed at the center of the enlarged SEM photograph. EDS qualitative analysis revealed that the chemical composition of this phase was 26.9 at%Fe69.8 at%Al3.3 at%Mg. It appears that the phase is intermetallic compound of Fe2 Al5 , referring to the FeAl phase diagram (Masalski et al., 1996). On the other hand, the intermetallic compound phase was not observed at the welded interface of the joint made using the welding time of 2.5 s. From this fact, it seems that the reason why the joint strength welded using 3.0 s welding time is low is attributed to the intermetallic compound formed at the welded interface. 3.3. The effect of A1050 insert metal on the joint strength In the study on ultrasonically welding of aluminum alloys containing magnesium, such as A5052 and A5086, it has been reported that the joint strength was decreased due to the magnesium seg-

3.2. The inuence of welding time on the joint strength The strength of the joint welded using the various welding times from 0.5 s to 3.0 s and the constant clamping force of 588 N is shown in Fig. 8. The joint strength increased with the welding

Fig. 10. Macrostructure and SEM micrograph of the interface of a joint welded under the conditions of 3 s welding time and 588 N clamping force. SEM micrograph shows the intermetallic compound formed at the interface.

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Fig. 14. Relation between tensile load of a joint welded using an insert metal and clamping force. Fig. 12. The inuence of preheating A5052 on the tensile load of a joint.

regation onto the faying surface during welding (Hiraishi and Watanabe, 2002). Fig. 11 shows the SEM photograph of SS400 fracture surface of the joint welded using 588 N clamping force and 2.5 s welding time. The inclusion at the bottom of a dimple circled in the fracture surface was analyzed as MgO using EDS. Therefore, it appears that the magnesium segregated onto the faying surface during welding probably decreased the joint strength. To make sure the harmful effect of the segregated magnesium on the joint strength, authors ultrasonically welded the A5052 specimen pre-heated at 100 C for 3.6 ks in air in order to segregate the magnesium onto faying surface before welding. It has been reported that the A5052 specimen surface was covered with MgO due to this pre-heat treatment (Hiraishi and Watanabe, 2002), and it has been conrmed that the base metal hardness was not changed by this pre-heat treatment. The strength of the joint between the pre-heated A5052 and SS400 welded using 588 N clamping force and 2.5 s welding time is shown in Fig. 12. The area ratio of W, S and EP region on the fracture surface of SS400 is shown in Fig. 13. The results in Figs. 12 and 13 prove that the segregated magnesium onto the faying surface by the preheating lowered the joint strength and the ratio of W region. The above-mentioned fact suggests that the joint strength of SS400/A5052 is certainly increased by inserting a commercially pure aluminum strip containing little amount of magnesium into the interface. A1050 commercially pure aluminum strip with dimensions of 25 mm 10 mm 1.2 mm in thickness was used as the insert metal after electrolytically polishing to make the joint of

SS400/A5052. The welding condition is 588 N clamping force and the welding times of 0.53.0 s. The strength of the joint and the area ratio of W, S and EP region on the fracture surface of SS400 are shown in Figs. 14 and 15, respectively. These gures indicate that the joint strength was increased by using the insert metal at the welding time longer than 1.0 s, compared to the result using no insert metal, as shown in Fig. 9. Especially, the joint strength remarkably increased at the welding time of 3.0 s. The joint strength was about 1800 N and by about 300% stronger than that without insert metal. The welded region, that is W region area, increased up to about 80%, as shown in Fig. 15. Fig. 16 shows the cross-sectional SEM view of the joint welded using 588 N clamping force and 3.0 s welding time. SEM photographs (a) and (b) are the interface views of A1050/SS400 and A1050/A5052, respectively. SEM photograph (a) revealed that the intermetallic compound layer, which was observed in Fig. 10, was not formed at the interface between A1050 and SS400, even though the welding time was 3.0 s. It seems that the A1050 insert metal containing little amount of magnesium effectively prevented the intermetallic compound of Fe2 Al5 from the formation at the interface. The previous paper has already reported that the magnesium contained in aluminum alloy had the action to increase the Fe diffusion into Al and resulted in promoting the formation of the Fe2 Al5 intermetallic compound at the interface (Watanabe et al., 2005). It seems that the interface between A1050 insert metal and A5052 is completely welded, as shown in SEM photograph (b).

Fig. 13. The inuence of preheating A5052 on the area ratio in the fracture surface of SS400.

Fig. 15. Area ratio of EP, S and W region in fracture surface of SS400 in a joint welded using an insert metal.

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Fig. 16. SEM micrographs of the joint interface welded using an insert metal at the welding time of 3 s: (a) interface of SS400/A1050 and (b) interface of A1050/A5052.

4. Conclusions The authors ultrasonically welded the mild steel sheet to the aluminum alloy sheet containing magnesium and investigated the effect of welding conditions on the mechanical properties and the interface microstructure of the joint. Furthermore, the effect of insert metal was investigated to achieve the joint with higher performance. The following results were obtained in this study. (1) It was possible to weld ultrasonically SS400 mild steel sheet to A5052 aluminum alloy sheet containing magnesium. The strength of a joint welded using various clamping forces and constant welding time of 1 s showed the maximum value at the clamping force of 588 N and the strength decreased with the clamping force because the excessively large clamping force reduced the frictional action at the interface. (2) The strength of a joint welded using the constant clamping force of 588 N and various welding times showed the maximum value at the welding time of 2.5 s. However, the strength of a joint welded using the welding time of 3.0 s deceased due to the formation of Fe2 Al5 intermetallic compound at the interface.

(3) Using the insert metal of commercially pure aluminum successfully improved the joint strength and the joint strength welded using 3.0 s welding time was about three times as large as that of the joint without the insert metal. References
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