Numerical and Experimental Study of AlSi Coating Effect on Nugget Size Growth in Resistance Spot Welding of Hot-Stamped Boron Steels

In recent years, increasing automotive safety by improving crashworthiness has been a focal point in the automotive industry, employing high-strength steel such as press hardenable steel (PHS). In addition to the improved strength of individual parts in the body of the vehicle, the strength of the resistance-spot-welded joints of these parts is highly important to obtain a safe structure.

In general, dimensions of weld nuggets are regarded as one of the criteria for the quality of spot-welded joints. In the presented research, a three-dimensional axisymmetric finite element model is developed to predict the nugget formation in resistance spot welding (RSW) of two types of PHS: the uncoated and AlSi-coated 1.8 mm boron steel after hot stamping.

A fully coupled electro-thermo-mechanical analysis was conducted using the commercial software package Abaqus. The FE predicted weld nugget development is compared with experimental results. The computed weld nugget sizes show good agreement with experimental values.