Welding deformation analysis of aluminum alloy and steel sheet metal parts based on resistance spot welding

Auto-body lightweight is becoming an important trend of energy saving and emission reduction. Various materials assembled together would be used to fabricate the auto-body to satisfy this demand. However, the assembly dimensional quality is difficult to be controlled in the real processing due to the huge differences in material properties. Therefore, it is necessary to control and analyze the welding deformation of aluminum alloy and steel. In this work, the orthogonal design experiment has been adopted to analyze the welding deformation of steel–aluminum sheet parts. Subsequently, the response surface model is proposed to establish the relationship between welding deformation and welding parameters by finite element analysis, which is verified by physical experiments again. Meanwhile, the anti-deformation method is also used to decrease the assembly deformation successfully. And the case of Z-shaped planes is applied to further illustrate the proposed method of this work. Finally, the results show that both the methods have a good simulation effect and a high prediction accuracy for the assembly dimensional quality