Journal of Welding and Joining

: Journal of KWJS. 2005;23(6):49-54. Published online January 26, 2006.; A Study on the Resistance Welding of Metallic Sandwich Panel : Part 1 - Determination of Process Parameters; Sang-Min Lee, Jin-Beom Kim, Suck-Joo Na

Abstract: Inner Structured and Bonded(ISB) panel, a kind of metallic sandwich panel, consists of two thin skin plates bonded to a micro-patterned inner structure. Its overall thickness is 1~3㎜ and it has attractive properties such as ultra-lightweight, high efficiency in stiffness-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratio. In many previous studies, resistance welding, brazing and adhesive bonding are studied for joining the panel. However these methods did not consider productivity, but focused on structural characteristics of joined panels, so that the joining process is very complicated and expensive. In this paper, a new joining process with resistance welding is developed. Curved surface electrodes are used to consider the productivity and the stopper is used between electrodes during welding time to maintain the shape of inner structure. Welding time, gap of electrodes and distance between welding points are selected as the process parameters. By measuring the tensile load with respect to the variation of welding time and gap of electrodes, proper welding conditions are studied. Welding time is proper between 1.5-2.5cycle. If welding time is too long, then inner structures are damaged by overheating. Gap of electrode should be shorter than threshold value for joint strength, when total thickness of inner structure and skin plate is 3.3㎜, the threshold distance is 3.0㎜.

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