An Investigation of Aluminum Spot Weld Joint Quality through Process Simulation and Real Experimental

الملخص

In many industries, the resistance spot welding process (RSW) has shown great promise, particularly for large-scale manufacturing. Typically, this procedure is used in the furniture, automotive, and other sheet metal sectors. Recently, the industrial sector has expressed interest in joining aluminum alloys utilizing resistance spot welding. The following work is based on the spot welding of successive joint of aluminum – magnesium alloy ( A-5454) with thickness of 1 mm  and carried out in two phases, the first study aims to achieve the optimum process parameters by conducting real welding experimental using different welding parameters and inspect the welded joints. In the second phase of the work, SIMUFACT WELDNG software was used to simulate the spot welding process of aluminum to predict the joint characteristics (nugget diameter, strength and distortion) and compare the results with experimental output. Obtained result showed that, Relative percentage errors for the nugget diameter derived from the models and the actual experimental data can reach 9.8%, and 9.28% for shear strength, for distortion the relative percentage error is4.8%.  These discrepancies are minor and to be expected given the model's assumptions about heat transport and the precision of the measurement instruments, leading to the conclusion that Simulufact welding software is a suitable method for simulating the model.