Flyer Thickness Effect in the Impact Welding of Aluminum to Steel

Impact welding is a material processing technology that enables metallurgical bonding in the solid state using a high-speed oblique collision. In this study, the effects of thickness of the flier and collision angle on weld interface morphology were investigated through the vaporizing foil actuator welding (VFAW) of AA1100-O to AISI 1018 Steel. The weld interfaces at various controlled conditions show wavelength increasing with the flier thickness and collision angle. The AA1100-O flier sheets ranged in thickness from 0.127 to 1.016 mm. The velocity of the fliers was directly measured by in situ photon Doppler velocimetry (PDV) and kept nearly constant at 670 m/s. The collision angles were controlled by a customized steel target with a set of various collision angles ranging from 8 deg to 28 deg. A numerical solid mechanics model was optimized for mesh sizes and provided to confirm the wavelength variation. Temperature estimates from the model were also performed to predict local melting and its complex spatial distribution near the weld interface and to compare that prediction to experiments.