Effect of Procedure Parameters on Mechanical Properties of GMAW-Brazing Joints of DP 1000 Steel

Dual phase steels (DP) offers a good combination of strength, formability and weldability and are widely used in the automotive industry. The incorporation of these new materials requires the development of new welding procedures. Currently, the Gas Metal Arc Welding - Brazing process (GMAW-B) is increasingly used, since it presents good surface appearance and does not produce the fusion of the materials to be joined, limiting the microstructural degradation suffered by DP steels. The objective of this work is to analyze the effect of GMAW-B welding parameters on the characteristics of welded joints in DP steels. Test pieces of DP steel sheets of 1000 MPa tensile strength were welded. The effect of the working angle, of the thermal input through the welding speed and the operation mode were analyzed. On the welded specimens the bead geometrical aspects, defects generations and microstructural evolution along the welded joint were determined. Tensile shear tests and microhardness profiles were carried out. When reducing the welding speed and with a working angle of 30 degrees, the wetting lengths of the filler metal increased on the DP steel sheets and consequently improved the resistance of the welded joint. With the pulsed mode, the surface appearance of the beads, the geometrical characteristics and the wetting are substantially improved, thus the fracture takes place outside the bead, at the heat affected zone (HAZ). It was defined a critical wetting length on both sheets to locate the fracture in the HAZ and maximize the fracture load. A simple model was developed to predict the fracture load from the bead dimensions and the material properties at the different zones.