High strength and thin materials are widely adopted in modern electric vehicles for lightweight design to achieve high energy efficiency. For battery modules, 5000 and 6000 aluminum are typically utilized as a structural material with a thickness range between 1 to 5 mm. Laser welding is one of the most optimum welding tools for joining such a thin material due to its unique advantages, e.g., high welding speed, high accuracy, high energy yet the smallest possible heat affect zone, etc.
This paper aims to develop a simplified yet effective FE modeling procedure to simulate the laser welding effects on the aluminum structures used in electric vehicle battery modules. A sequentially-coupled thermo-mechanical analysis procedure is developed to determine the softened zone size for aluminum weldments. Then a tie-rupture weld model incorporates the softened zone to predict the weld failure strength. The effectiveness of the developed modeling procedures is confirmed by a large number of coupon level weld strength tests. Finally, a module-level box pull test is simulated and validated by the test data with the knowledge obtained from the developed welding modeling procedure.
