Material competition in auto industry has been traditionally intensive. Steel has been the dominant material used in automobiles since 1920s; however, requirements for cleaner vehicles are forcing automakers to reduce exhaust emissions. As a result, interest in magnesium, as the lightest engineering metal, has been increased during the last decade. Current Mg automotive parts, however, are only manufactured by casting and extrusion, and it has not yet been used as sheet in body parts. This research is being done as a part of feasibility study of Mg alloys application in automotive body components.
Resistance spot welding (RSW), on the other hand, is already the most common joining process in auto bodies. A typical vehicle in North America contains about 4000 to 5000 spot welds. However, applicability of this joining process for wrought Mg alloys has not yet been studied.
As spot welds are points of stress concentration, they are more likely for fatigue failure. Therefore, verified fatigue models are needed to make sure that spot welded components will perform satisfactorily throughout the total life of vehicles.
References
1. Behravesh B., Jahed H., Lambert S., Chengji M, "Constitutive Modeling for Cyclic Behavior of AZ31B Magnesium Alloy and its Application," Advanced Materials Research Vols. 891-892 (2014) pp 809-814;
2. Behravesh B, Jahed H, Lambert S, "Fatigue characterization and modeling of AZ31B magnesium alloy spot-welds," International Journal of Fatigue 64 (2014) 1–13;
3. Behravesh S. B., Jahed H., and Lambert S., "Characterization of magnesium spot welds under tensile and cyclic loadings," Materials & Design 32(2011), pp. 4890-4900.
4. Behravesh SB, Jahed H, Lambert S, "Cyclic Plasticity Constitutive Modelling of AZ31B," International Symposium of Plasticity, Freeport, Bahamas, Jan 2014;
5. Behravesh SB, Jahed H, Lambert S, "Fatigue Characterization and Modeling of AZ31B Spot-welded Joints, ASME 2013 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition,"IMECE2013, San Diego, California, November, 2013;
6. Behravesh SB, Jahed H, Lambert S, "Fatigue Characterization and Modeling of AZ31B Spot-welded Joints," ICMFF10, Kyoto, Japan, 3-7 June 2013;
7. Badarinarayan H., Behravesh S. B., Jahed H., Lambert S., et al., "Monotonic and Fatigue Behavior of Mg Alloy Friction Stir Spot Welds: An International Benchmark Test in the “Magnesium Front End Research and Development” Project," TMS 2011 Annual Meeting & Exhibition2011: San Diego, California.
8. Behravesh B., Liu L., Jahed H., Lambert S., Glinka G., Zhou Y. , "Effect of Nugget Size on Tensile and Fatigue Strength of Spot Welded AZ31 Magnesium Alloy," Detroit, MI, April 13-15, 2010.