Resistance welding of thin stainless steel sandwich sheets with fibrous metallic cores: Experimental and numerical studies

This paper concerns resistance spot welding (RSW) of two types of thin stainless steel sandwich sheet. The cores of these materials, made of stainless steel fibres, are highly porous (> around 85 vol.-%) and have low thermal and electrical conductivities. However, these conductivities change during the compression and heating associated with RSW. A sequentially coupled finite element model has been developed, in which the crushed core is treated as a continuum, with properties which vary throughout the process. It is shown that a constitutive relationship of the type commonly used for crushable foams can be successfully employed to simulate the deformation of the sandwich sheets. The thermoelectrical part of the model incorporates the effects of the associated phase transformations and changes in interfacial conductance. It is shown that the predictions are broadly consistent with data obtained during welding experiments. The model is used to explore the effects of welding parameters on weld characteristics (weld pool formation and weld nugget shape).