Numerical Modelling of Thermo-Mechanical Effects Developed in Resistance Spot Welding of E304 Steel with Copper Interlayer

Resistance spot welding is a technique applied to join two or more similar or dissimilar metals, by applying pressure and electric current to the spot-weld area. Based on the electrical resistance property of metals, a great amount of heat is generated and used to carry out materials joints, by creating a molten metal nucleus between the components to be welded. The influence of an interlayer material, positioned between the parent materials, on the strength of similar or dissimilar welded joints was studied by researchers worldwide. In most cases, by optimising the process parameters, an increase in the welded joint strength was achieved. In this paper, the resistance spot welding of 1mm thick E304 stainless steel sheets, both with and without a copper foil interlayer, was investigated, by applying, in all cases, the same process parameters. The tensile test of the joints showed a decrease in the strength of joints performed with interlayer metal. A method to control the deterioration level of the joint’ mechanical properties is the Finite Element Analysis which allows to optimise the process parameters so that the negative effects of the process on the joint quality to be limited. It was found that an increase in amperage is needed to compensate for the addition of the interlayer metal and to obtain an adequate melting in the spot-weld area. This modification causes an increase of the molten core diameter that will lead to improvement of the welded joint strength, while no significant influence on the internal stress level was noticed in the processing and numerical analysis of the output data.