TY - GEN A1 - Piott, Michael A1 - Werber, Alexandra A1 - Schleuss, Leander A1 - Doynov, Nikolay A1 - Ossenbrink, Ralf A1 - Michailov, Vesselin T1 - A study of the heat transfermechanism in resistance spot welding of aluminum alloys AA5182 and AA6014 T2 - International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology N2 - This work investigates heat transfer mechanism of aluminum resistance spot welding process. The main target is to determine thermal contact conductance and heat transfer coefficients for natural convection and thermal radiation at ambient air and forced convection inside the water-cooled electrodes. For this purpose, the heat transfer of hot sheets in a welding gun for aluminum alloys AA5182 and AA6014 is analyzed experimentally and numerically. The transient temperature field is measured by several thermocouples in a simplified experimental setup. Subsequent thermal-mechanical coupled finite element simulations of the experiments were used to calibrate the heat transfer coefficients. The heat transfer coefficient for natural convection and thermal radiation to ambient air is 13 W m2 K and the heat transfer coefficient for forced convection of electrode water-cooling is 25,000 W m2 K. The results indicate that the thermal contact conductance can be assumed ideal for welding process. Additionally, the finite element model is validated by the measured and calculated dissipated heat due to forced convection. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to compare the influence of maximum and minimum heat transfer coefficients of forced convection (water-cooling) on transient temperature field and dissipated heat of sample AA5182. KW - Aluminum resistance spot welding KW - Heat transfer KW - FE simulation KW - Thermal contact conductance KW - Electrode water-cooling Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-020-05650-x SN - 0268-3768 SN - 1433-3015 VL - Vol. 111 SP - 263 EP - 271 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Piott, Michael A1 - Werber, Alexandra A1 - Schleuss, Leander A1 - Doynov, Nikolay A1 - Ossenbrink, Ralf A1 - Michailov, Vesselin T1 - Numerical and experimental analysis of heat transfer in resistance spot welding process of aluminum alloy AA5182 T2 - International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology N2 - In this work, a numerical model and experiments are used to investigate heat transfer processes during resistance spot welding process of aluminum. For this purpose, calibrated heat transfer conditions and thermal contact conductance are transferred from a previous work to a coupled thermal-electrical-mechanical finite element model. First, all domains of the numerical model are validated by an experimental study. The experimental setup includes the measurement of current, voltage drops, electrode force, electrode displacement, and temperatures while two sheets of aluminum alloy AA5182 are joined. Computational results show that most of the generated Joule heat (78%) is stored in the electrodes or transferred to cooling water until the end of weld time. Heat transfer by natural convection and thermal radiation is very small and can in general be neglected for complete process. Afterwards, the influence of electrode water-cooling on welding process is investigated numerically. The results indicate that the generation of Joule heat and thermal energy of the sheets during weld time is only slightly affected by electrode water-cooling. As a consequence, water-cooling conditions do not affect nugget formation. In contrast, electrode water-cooling highly influences cooling conditions during hold time. KW - Aluminum resistance spot welding KW - Heat transfer KW - FE-simulation KW - Electrode water-cooling KW - Instrumented experiments Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-020-06197-7 SN - 0268-3768 SN - 1433-3015 VL - Vol. 111 IS - 5-6 SP - 1671 EP - 1682 ER -