Browsing by Author "Ma, Cheng"

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    HAZ effects in hot-rolled dual-phase steel during flash butt welding of wheel rims
    (Springer, 2023-09-29) Han, Jian; Zhu, Lisong; Wang, Jun; Zhang, Caidong; Sun, Li; Zhang, Zhigiang; Ma, Cheng; Jiang, Zhengyi; Linton, Valerie
    The embrittlement and softening behavior in simulated heat-affected zones (HAZ) of a newly designed dual-phase DP680 steel for wheel rim applications with different flash allowances were investigated to determine weldability, and offer valuable information for the steel design and its subsequent flash butt welding (FBW). The characterization of microstructure and mechanical performance for the simulated HAZ was conducted by means of optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, hardness distribution, and Charpy V-notch (CVN) values at selected temperatures. The investigation demonstrates that the toughness of coarse-grained HAZ was kept at an average level of 25.3 J when the prior austenite grain size was controlled to 60.54 μm at a flash allowance of 14 mm (equivalent to heat input of 15.14 kJ/cm based on real welding process), which exhibits the worst toughness when the flash allowance was changed from 4 to 14 mm. Further, with a higher martensite fraction (> 30 pct) in base material (BM), the softening occurs in inter-critical HAZ (ICHAZ) instead of sub-critical HAZ since most of martensite in ICHAZ has decomposed, and the rest ferrite and newly formed bainite with remaining martensite reduce the hardness to a larger extent compared to SCHAZ, whose martensite has only partly decomposed. Even if the softening degree is up to 21.6 pct compared to the BM (average 233 HV0.5), the work hardening during a series of forming processes after FBW has alleviated the softening evidently (work hardening degree > 10 pct). However, the failure location is still in ICHAZ after forming extension which has been confirmed in practical applications of DP680 FBW and subsequent forming processes.
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    Physical simulation and numerical simulation of flash butt welding for innovative dual phase steel DP590: a comparative study
    (MDPI, 2023-05-03) Song, Jingwen; Zhu, Lisong; Wang, Jun; Lu, Yao; Ma, Cheng; Han, Jian; Jiang, Zhengyi
    In this study, the microstructure and performance of newly designed dual-phase steel (DP590) after joining by flash butt welding (FBW) for vehicle wheel rims was analysed and compared by two simulations, i.e., physical simulation and numerical simulation, due to the high acceptance of these two methodologies. Physical simulation is regarded as a thermal–mechanical solution conducted by the Gleeble 3500 simulator and which can distribute the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of the obtained weld joint into four typical HAZs. These are coarse-grained HAZ, fine-grained HAZ, inter-critical HAZ and sub-critical HAZ. A combination of ferrite and tempered martensite leads to the softening behaviour at the sub-critical HAZ of DP590, which is verified to be the weakest area, and influences the final performance due to ~9% reduction of hardness and tensile strength. The numerical simulation, relying on finite element method (FEM) analysis, can distinguish the temperature distribution, which helps us to understand the relationship between the temperature distribution and real microstructure/performance. Based on this study, the combination of physical and numerical simulations can be used to optimise the flash butt welding parameters (flash and butt processes) from the points of temperature distribution (varied areas), microstructure and performance, which are guidelines for the investigation of flash butt welding for innovative materials.