On the complete interface development of Al/Cu magnetic pulse welding via experimental characterizations and multiphysics numerical simulations

TL;DR

This study combines experimental characterizations and advanced multiphysics simulations to comprehensively analyze the interface development in Al/Cu magnetic pulse welding, revealing the impact of impact velocity and angle on interface morphology and joint quality.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled electromagnetic-mechanical and Eulerian simulation framework to understand interface formation and wave morphology in Al/Cu magnetic pulse welding.

Findings

Impact velocity decreases with increasing impact angle.

Wavy interface morphology is influenced by impact parameters.

Microstructural analysis shows heterogeneous IM layers with voids.

Abstract

A complex Al/Cu magnetic pulse welding interface is systematically investigated using experimental characterizations and numerical simulations. A Coupled electromagnetic-mechanical simulation is proposed to compute the impact velocity and impact angle along the entire interface. This model allows to further understand the formation mechanism of various interface characteristics during MPW. The results revealed that the impact velocity gradually decreases in conjunction with the gradual increase of the impact angle. These simulations elucidate the experimentally observed successive interface morphologies, i.e., the unwelded zone, vortex zone, intermediate (IM) layers and wavy interface. Microstructural characterizations show that the IM layers are formed by mechanical mixing combined with melting and are characterized by highly heterogeneous porous zone with random sizes and distributions of void. Subsequently, an Eulerian simulation is proposed to investigate the thermomechanical effects during the wave formation which vastly influence the joint quality. The predicted wavy morphologies, temperature distribution and average equivalent plastic strain along the interface provided a better understanding on the formation steps of the experimentally observed wave morphologies. The actual kinematics during wave generation revealed that the wave was formed with repeated deformation of the interface material. The wave amplitude increases with increasing jetting angle; while the wavelength increases with increasing collision point velocity.