Strength of Arc Spot Welded Joints in a High Strength Steel Sheet

To achieve improvement of crashworthiness and weight reduction of car bodies, the application of high strength steel sheets to car bodies is expanding [1, 2]. However cross tension strength of spot welded joints decreases as material strength increases in the range of material strength exceeding 780MPa grade. Therefore arc spot welding was attempted to enhance the joint strength in a high strength steel sheet of 980MPa in tensile strength. Consequently, the following experimental results were obtained: 1) cross tension strength (CTS) of the arc spot welded joints doubled compared with CTS of spot welded joints when appropriate welding conditions such as heat input and hole diameter of the sheet were selected and 2) height of excess weld decay in addition to the diameter of weld metal for the arc spot welded joints played an important role in improving CTS.