Journal of Materials Processing Technology 119 (2001) 180184

Welding of tailored blanks of different materials

J. Tuseka,*, Z. Kampusa, M. Subanb
a

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia b Welding Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Abstract This paper treats welding of tailored blanks made of different materials. In general, fusion welding and welding with pressure, practically without fusion, are described. Fusion welding may be carried out with or without the addition of ller material. In Section 3, general characteristics of tailored blanks are described. In Section 4, MIG welding and laser welding of austenitic stainless steel with ferrite nonstainless steel are described. After welding, hardness of the welded joints was measured. The welded joints were subjected to deep drawing. At the end, conclusions are stated. Investigations have shown that tailored blanks of high-alloy stainless steel cannot be laser or TIG welded to those of low-alloyed ferrite steel without the addition of ller material. A suitable process and ller material should be selected. The purpose of the ller material is to compensate for the differences in chemical and physical properties of both materials. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Tailored blanks; Laser welding; MIG/MAG welding

1. Introduction The use of tailored blanks has increased in practice and it is being introduced in all the elds of use of metal materials. With the production of preproduced and precut tailored blanks, it is possible to reduce the number of working operations, the amount of waste and energy consumption, and easier to achieve the physicalchemical requirements for products and to improve their mechanical and strength properties. When introducing the technology of tailored blanks, it is important to select the materials and shape and thickness of semi-products correctly, but it is also extremely important to select a proper welding process for joining tailored blanks. Only an optimum choice of materials and material pairs for welded joints, proper design of semi-products, welded joints and weld edges, selection of the joining procedure and technology and correct measures prior to, during and after welding can ensure the manufacture of high-quality products. 2. Procedures for welding tailored blanks As mentioned in Section 1, welding is of extreme importance for successful introduction of the production
Corresponding author. Tel.: 386-061-136-74-74; fax: 386-061-136-72-22. E-mail address: janez.tusek@guest.arnes.si (J. Tusek).
*

of tailored blanks into the manufacture of nal products. In addition to cost-effectiveness and the economic effect, the welding process must also full the following three conditions:  the weld face and root should be straight, without any superfluous material and without side cracking;  weld strength should be equal to or higher than that of the parent metal;  formability of the welded joint should be equal to or better than that of the parent metal HV < 200. Over 100 different welding processes are known today, and with the development of new materials and equipment, new ones are constantly being created. In general, they can be divided according to various criteria. Fusion welding, with or without the addition of ller material, and cold solidstate pressure welding are important for welding of tailored blanks. 2.1. Fusion welding In fusion welding, a part of the parent metal as well as the ller material, if it is used, are melted. The parent metal (there can be several different types) and the ller material are mixed when melting during welding and they create an entity called a weld or joint or seam. The ller material has several functions in welding. Its primary purpose is to ll the weld groove and create a welded joint. If different types of parent metals are used, an appropriate ller material can

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compensate for their different properties, and they cannot be welded together without it. Due to mixing in the molten pool, the degree of difference between parent metals to be welded together is limited, i.e. the greater the physical and chemical differences between workpieces, the more demanding the welding technology. Fusion welding without a ller material cannot be used to join metals and alloys which are poorly soluble or even completely insoluble in one another. Fusion welding is divided according to various criteria. The most rough and recognisable of them is a division into welding with consumable and welding with non-consumable electrodes. In welding with a non-consumable electrode (usually of tungsten), i.e. TIG welding, the electrodes serve to maintain the arc. A ller material is added manually or automatically in the form of a wire, strip or powder. If the weld edge is appropriately prepared, welding can be performed without the ller material. The use of TIG welding of tailored blanks did not become widespread in practice due to the slowness of the process. It could be successfully established in welding of tailored blanks in which the weld edge is anged. The anged edge gets melted during welding and a at butt-welded joint is obtained, which is a precondition for successful further processing of tailored blanks. Fusion welding with a consumable electrode for welding of tailored blanks is used for special cases, primarily when different materials are welded together and the ller material serves to compensate for their different physical and chemical properties. The disadvantage of welding with a consumable electrode lies in an appropriate shape of the welded joint. When a ller material is used, it is not possible to obtain a completely straight weld face or root. This means that such welded joints need to be further machined prior to further processing. In the mass production of products for general consumption, welding of tailored blanks has been known for a long time and is well established in practice [15]. Laser welding without a ller material is by far the most frequently used process for such joining [613]. A CO2 laser with a wavelength of 10.6 mm and power ranging from 1 to 10 kW is most frequently used. For example, for sheet steel with a thickness of 1.0 mm, a laser with a power of 2 kW would be used, which enables welding speeds of up to a few metres per minute. If the total energy of this laser is concentrated on a spot with a diameter of 0.5 mm, this means that the energy per centimetre amounts to over 1 MW. Such energy is required to achieve a keyhole effect, which ensures that the welded joint reaches through the entire thickness of the sheet metal. The laser beam penetrates into the depth of the workpiece with the molten part of the parent metal around it. Behind the laser beam, the molten pool solidies and forms a weld. Laser devices are divided with respect to laser beam type, power and also with respect to the number of degrees of freedom of the entire device.

2.2. Pressure welding Pressure welding is used when mechanical energy is more important than other energies for the formation of the weld. Forge, diffusion, ultrasonic, explosion, vibration and other welding processes all belong to this group. In practice, only one process has become established to date for welding of tailored blanks, but several techniques have been derived from it [14]. Resistance seam welding can be used for thin sheet metal at high speeds, i.e. up to several tens of metres per minute. The quality of such welds is high and their shape permits direct further processing and forming. Classical resistance seam welding is used to join overlapping sheet metal (lap weld); an uninterrupted weld is obtained, which is often required to be waterproof (pressure vessels, tank, pipes). With the rst technique, sheet metal pieces are arranged in the way to overlap. The size of the overlap depends on metal thickness, type of material, welding current intensity, welding speed and pressure. The welding parameters and the pressure on the electrodes should be selected in such a way that deformation of the workpiece edges occurs and a at butt-welded joint is obtained. With the second technique, the ller material is used in the form of a wire, strip or thin foil. Its purpose is to ll the gap between the workpieces and compensate for the physical and chemical differences between the materials. This process thus permits welding of different materials; ordinary structural steel can be welded to high-alloyed stainless steel. The ller material in this case is in the form of a wire or strip (18Cr/8Ni/6Mn), the same is used for fusion welding of the above-mentioned materials. In recent years, a new variant of cold welding called cut welding has also become established in practice [15]. This technique enables welding of identical and different materials into a whole as a nal product, or for further processing. In cut welding, impurities and oxides are removed from the surface of the workpieces by cutting. Immediately afterwards, the two workpieces are welded together in vacuum. Irrespective of the newness of the technique and the fact that there is little practical experience with it, it can be expected that it will become well established in practice, primarily for welding of non-ferrous metals. It will be very much suitable for welding of copper and aluminium, aluminium and lead, and also for other metals with different properties. In addition to this technique, cold pressure welding of tailored blanks should also be mentioned. It has been researched at certain institutes and is described in the paper [16]. 3. Tailored blanks Tailored blanks are semi-products of various shapes, thicknesses and materials which are welded together into one piece for further processing. According to some data,

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Fig. 2. Laser welded joint with equal and different thicknesses without the addition of filler material. Fig. 1. A few characteristic examples of tailored blanks and profiles.

tailored blanks have been used for several decades [1], while according to others only recently [25]. Some researchers also consider only thin sheet metal of various shapes and cuts to be tailored blanks, while others include proles or metal elements of different shapes, which are welded and further processed after welding to obtain the nal product. Fig. 1 presents a few characteristic examples of tailored blanks welded by using different methods. Examples AD show welded tailored blanks of different shapes, i.e. from differently cut sheet metal. They can also be made from different materials, of different thicknesses, and individual tailored blanks may be coated with another metal while others are not. Example E shows a weld between two sheet metals of different thicknesses. The other examples, i.e. F H, present welded tailored blanks of different materials. Welding of different materials of which one is coated with a protective layer of metal and the other is not is the greatest problem in achieving satisfactory weld quality, which needs to be further machined or processed after welding. The use of tailored blanks has become the most established in the car industry. Tailored blanks of different thicknesses, quality and with different protective coatings (galvanised, nickel-plated and chrome-plated) are the most frequently welded using lasers of different power and type and with various techniques of resistance seam welding. To achieve a high quality of laser welding of tailored blanks, the cut quality of the weld edge should be good, without burr, and the weld groove should not contain any gaps [2,10]. Welds made using a laser have a very narrow molten area (0.51 mm) and when sheet metals of different thicknesses are welded together, the transition from the thicker sheet metal to the thinner piece is very smooth (Fig. 2). This can be achieved with materials which are the same or very similar in their chemical composition.

4. Practical example of welding of tailored blanks made of different materials using different welding processes The need for welding tailored blanks of different materials is increasing. Most frequently, workpieces of different types of steel and different non-ferrous metals are welded together. Less often, there is a need for welding of sheet steel with a non-ferrous metal. The present paper will present an example of welding of stainless austenite steel with ferrite steel. Two different processes were used. In classical welding, i.e. MIG welding, a ller material was used and welding was shielded with a neutral gas, i.e. argon. The second process was laser welding. Both tailored blanks made of the above-mentioned materials were welded together without the addition of ller material. In both cases the welded tailored blanks were subjected to mechanical processing (forming) and a few additional studies of the weld were performed. 4.1. Arc welding with a consumable electrode (MIG welding) Owing to physical and chemical differences between the two parent metals, a ller material was used to compensate for these differences and create a uniform welded joint with good durability and strength. The ller material has a general designation 18/8/6, with a chemical composition stated together with that of the parent metals in Table 1.
Table 1 Chemical composition of the parent metal and filler material Designation Parent metal 1 Parent metal 2 Filler material C 0.21 0.10 0.12 Si 0.40 1.00 0.6 Mn 0.60 2.00 6.5 Cr 18.00 19.0 Ni 18.00 19.0 Ti 0.80

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Fig. 3. Macro-specimens of two welds made of two different types of steel: (a) MIG welding with a filler material; (b) laser welding without a filler material.

Table 2 Basic welding parameters Current intensity, I (A) Weld face Weld root 140 160 Arc voltage, U (V) 22.2 24.1 Welding speed (m/min) 0.66 0.66

tailored blanks and that welds are made without the addition of a ller material. We used the same technique. A CO2 laser source with a power of 5.1 kW was used and welding was performed with a speed of 2.5 m/min. The weld face as well as the root were shielded with helium gas during welding. A macrograph of the weld is shown in Fig. 3b. 5. Hardness measurement on the weld Knowledge of the variation of hardness does not yield sufcient data on the quality of a weld but it enables an approximate estimation of ductility and formability. Fig. 4 shows the variation of hardness from one parent metal through the weld into the other parent metal. The results obtained for hardness were more or less expected. The explanation for such results (Fig. 4) can also be found in Schaefer's diagram. Even at a degree of mixing of only a

The wire diameter was 1.2 mm. Welding was performed on both sides, shielded with argon with an addition of 2% O2. The basic welding parameters for the weld face and root are given in Table 2. A macrograph of the weld is shown in Fig. 3. 4.2. Laser welding It was mentioned in Sections 2 and 3 that in practice a laser energy source is used almost exclusively for welding of

Fig. 4. Variation of hardness over the entire welded joint parent metal weld parent metal for the two welding processes.

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few percent of high-alloy austenitic stainless steel in lowalloy ferrite steel, martensite steel is obtained, which hardens very quickly. This is exactly what happened during laser welding. When MIG welding with a ller material was used, the martensite zone was avoided (see Schaefer's diagram). In addition, the ller material contains 6.5% manganese, which additionally contributes to increased toughness of the weld. 6. Test of deep drawing of thick sheet metal Owing to the relative punch diameter dp=So 8, it was possible to use a die for deep drawing without a blank holder. The inlet die opening had a tractrix shape with a minimum diameter of 58 mm, while the punch diameter was 40 mm. The die did not differ at all from the classical tool for deep drawing without a blank holder. A tensile test was used to determine forming properties of the two materials. The plasticity curve for the steel suitable for deep drawing was shaped as a potential curve, while the plasticity curve for stainless steel was a straight line. The experiments of deep drawing of MIG welded tailored blanks were successful. The maximum drawing ratio at which cup fracture did not yet occur was b 2:37. At greater drawing ratios, fractures always occurred on the transition between the cup bottom and wall. Experiments as well as simulations with the nite element method [17] showed that non-uniform cup height and deformed cup edges occur in drawing of tailored blanks made of materials with very different forming properties because a softer material stretches more, and the harder one penetrates it towards the end of the drawing procedure. Drawing of laser welded cups was unsuccessful, as could be predicted on the basis of the hardness distribution in the weld (Fig. 4). Even though, the blank was annealed T 680 C; t 1 h and hardness at the weld location decreased to 400 HV, fracture occurred at the very beginning in the transition zone of the weld. 7. Conclusions On the basis of theoretical analysis of welding of tailored blanks of different materials and the experimental part presented in this paper, a few conclusions can be drawn:  welding of tailored blanks of different materials is possible under certain conditions;

 the most suitable process for welding tailored blanks of different materials are those in which there is no melting during welding;  welding of tailored blanks of stainless high-alloy and nonstainless ferrite steel can be performed by melting with a filler material;  laser welding of the above-mentioned materials without the addition of filler material cannot be performed or it is not possible to obtain a weld with satisfactory mechanical properties. References
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