Spot welding between aluminium alloy and Zn-coated steel by friction stirring

Abstract

Application of aluminum alloy, which is a typical lightweight material, has been expected to achieve energy saving and prevention of pollution in many kinds of transportation vehicles. While the structure made of whole aluminum alloy, however, is lightweight, it still has problems, such as low mechanical strength and high cost. Hence, a hybrid or joining structure made of aluminum alloy and steel seems to be reasonable because of its light weight and higher strength.

To make a hybrid structure for transportation vehicles, we examined welding by friction stirring between aluminum alloy and low-carbon steel, which could be welded without melted weld materials. As a result, welding between aluminum alloy and low-carbon steel that had a thin intermetallic compound at the weld interface was obtained.

In recent automobile manufacturing, zinc-coated steel has been used for structural parts in general. On welding between zinc-coated steel and other materials such as aluminum alloy, existence of a Zn layer between aluminum and steel has to be taken into account to get a high-quality joint between the materials.

In this study, spot joining between aluminum alloy and several kinds of zinc-coated steels by friction stirring was carried out, and the effect of the coated layer both on the weld strength and weld interface microstructure was investigated. As a result, the joint between aluminum alloy and zinc-coated steel was stronger than that between aluminum alloy and non-coated steel, when the coated layer was removed at the weld interface by plastic flow of aluminum alloy.

Keywords:

• friction stirring
• aluminum alloy
• zinc-coated steel
• dissimilar metals
• spot welding

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the OSG Corporation which kindly supplied us with the ultra-hard tool used in the experiment and to Sumitomo Metal Industries Limited, which kindly supplied us with galvanized steel plate.