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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar

joints of AA6061-T6 and galvanized DP590
Ming Lou b , YongBing Li a,b, , Yuan Wang b , Bin Wang c , Xinmin Lai b
a
b
c

State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacture for Thin-Walled Structures, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
School of Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, PR China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 14 July 2013
Received in revised form 2 January 2014
Accepted 1 March 2014
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Advanced high strength steel (AHSS)
Rivet-welding (RW)
Micro-hardness distribution
Inter-metallic compounds (IMC)

a b s t r a c t
The hybrid use of aluminum alloy and advanced high strength steel (AHSS) has become an inevitable
trend for fabricating a lightweight auto-body. Self-piercing riveting (SPR) as a preferred cold-forming
fastening method is facing problem like weak interlocking when joining dissimilar combinations with
considerably unequal thickness. In this study, a hybrid joining method, named rivet-welding (RW) was
proposed to improve the robustness and strength of the SPR joint, by applying an electric current
to it. For better evaluating the new process, the effects of heating time and electrode design on the
microstructure, micro-hardness distribution, and mechanical performance of the RW joints were studied and compared systematically with the traditional SPR ones. The results showed that the electric
current could improve the microstructure of the steel rivet and bottom DP590, and under long heating
time, the inter-metallic compounds (IMC) could be formed at the interface of trapped AA6061-T6 and
bottom DP590. Meanwhile, the electric current could increase the micro-hardness of the rivet and bottom
DP590, and soften the AA6061-T6 around the rivet leg. In addition, the RW process using lower annular electrode A (LAE A) could obtain 12.1% higher tensile-shear strength compared with the traditional
SPR process.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The extensive use of light metals, such as aluminum alloy could
signicantly reduce the weight of vehicle body. However, the aluminum alloy cannot completely replace the advanced high strength
steel (AHSS) yet, considering the cost and performance. Therefore,
the hybrid use of both aluminum and AHSS structures in bodyin-white (BIW) has become a more practical method to realize
lightweighting as mentioned by Sun et al. (2007), for most of the
automobile manufacturers.
Abe et al. (2009) indicated that it is of great difculty to join
aluminum and steel directly by conventional resistance spot welding (RSW) process, since there are large differences in physical and
chemical properties between aluminum and steel, and the hard and
brittle intermetallic compounds easily form at the interface of the
dissimilar metals. Recent researches showed that to obtain a sound
joint by RSW, either a cover plate placed between the aluminum

Corresponding author at: School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong

University, Shanghai 200240, PR China. Tel.: +86 21 34206304.
E-mail address: yongbinglee@sjtu.edu.cn (Y. Li).

and electrode showed by Qiu et al. (2009) or aluminum-cladded

steel sheet showed by Sun et al. (2004) should be introduced,
which makes the process too complicated and costly to industrialize. Friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is thought to be a potential
method to join aluminum to steel for the signicantly reduced heat
input, but Feng et al. (2005) indicated that the residual process hole
could weaken the joint strength by decreasing bonding widths.
New methods have been invented to ll the process hole, however, the cost is much higher and the extended cycle time cannot
meet the requirements of manufacturing takt time. For clinching,
even though the running cost is quite low, the clinched joint is
not strong enough, and thus not suitable for joining force-bearing
components.
Nowadays, self-piercing riveting (SPR) as a cold forming process
is preferred for joining dissimilar materials, and has been successfully applied to join multi-material components of BMW series 5
and Audi TT etc. As reported by Porcaro et al. (2010), different rivet
and die should be used to achieve optimal joint strength for different sheet combination. However it is impractical to on-line replace
the rivet and die with the variation of the sheet combinations in
production line. Therefore, to guarantee the joint quality, more SPR
equipments should be used in each assembly station, which would

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006
0924-0136/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
and galvanized DP590. J. Mater. Process. Tech. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006

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Fig. 1. Overview of the rivet-welding process.

greatly increase the cost of vehicle body manufacturing. On the

other hand, the steel sheets used in auto-body become stronger
and thinner so as to reduce the weight, and it is a consensus that
for a better SPR result, the bottom sheet material should be no less
than one-third of the total stackup thickness, as specied by Henrob
Co. (2011). Thus, when joining dissimilar combinations of thick top
aluminum and thin bottom sheet steel, the mechanical interlocking
may not be adequate for designed joint strength.
In order to improve the performance of the SPR joints with
considerably unequal sheet thickness combination, a novel joint
reinforcement method, named rivet-welding (RW) is proposed
in this study, in which an electric current is applied to the SPR
joint via specially designed electrodes, to produce resistance heat,
and the effects of heating time and electrode design on the joint
characteristics were studied systematically. For better evaluating
the inuence of resistance heat, the RW joints were compared
with the traditional SPR ones in both tensile-shear and fatigue
tests.

2. Experimental procedure
2.1. Process overview
The RW process involves two phases: SPR phase and welding
phase, as shown in Fig. 1. In the SPR phase, a conventional SPR joint
is made to form the initial mechanical connection rstly. Then, an
electric current is applied to the riveted sample during the welding phase via two specially designed annular electrodes to produce
resistance heat in the joint.
Zn/Sn coated medium carbon steel rivets with a head diameter of 7.8 mm and a total length of 6.5 mm, and the tool steel die
(DZ0902000H1R1) with a middle diameter of 9 mm were used,
which were supplied by Henrob Co. Specially designed annular
electrodes made from CuCrZr alloy are used in this study, as
shown in Fig. 2. The inner diameter of the upper annular electrode
(UAE) is 8 mm (Fig. 2(a)), which is slightly larger than the rivets
head diameter, to prevent overheating it. Meanwhile, the middle

Fig. 2. Drawings of the sectional view of (a) upper annular electrode (UAE) and (b) lower annular electrode A (LAE A), and top view of (c) LAE A and (d) LAE B. (unit: mm).

Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
and galvanized DP590. J. Mater. Process. Tech. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006

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Fig. 3. Rivet-welding setups: (a) SPR machine and (b) MFDC welding system.

diameter of the lower annular electrode A (LAE A) is designed as

8.8 mm (Fig. 2(b)), which is also smaller than the middle diameter of the die used in SPR phase to make sure electric current ow
through deformed steel. Furthermore, lower annular electrode B
(LAE B), as shown in Fig. 2(d), is designed by removing partial material above the red line from LAE A every 60 , so as to locally increase
the electric current owing through the rivet tip and lower steel
sheet.
2.2. Materials
For a dissimilar sheet combination, especially the combination
of aluminum and steel, the corrosion problem is critical because
of the great discrepancy in electric potential. Thus, most of the
automobile manufacturers prefer to use galvanized steel sheet in
Al/Steel dissimilar sheet combinations. In this study, 3 mm thick
aluminum AA6061-T6 and 1.2 mm thick hot-dipped galvanized
dual-phase steel DP590 were used for the propose of anti-corrosion,
and sheared into 130 mm 38 mm coupons, to make up dissimilar sheet combination of AA6061-T6 + DP590. The chemical
compositions, physical and mechanical properties of these materials are listed in Table 1. The aluminum coupons were polished
by abrasive paper to remove the surface oxide layer, and acetone was used to clean up the surface greases on the DP590
coupons.

splashes through the bottom steel due to the excessive heat input.
In present study, the trapped aluminum of RW joints using LAE A
and LAE B splashed under welding time of 450 ms and 300 ms,
respectively. Therefore, 400 ms and 250 ms were set as the respective maximum welding time here for RW process using LAE A and
LAE B.

2.4. Microscopic analysis

For the metallographic examination, all the obtained samples
were cross-sectioned along the center of the button carefully,
and mechanically ground and polished by conventional metallographic techniques. The cross-sections were etched using 3%
nitric acid alcohol solution for 5 s and Keller reagent (the mixed
aqueous solution of 2 ml HF + 3 ml HCl + 5 ml HNO3 + 190 ml H2 O)
for 10 s, to observe the microstructures of steel and aluminum
alloy, respectively. A Leica DM2500 M optical microscope and a
SMT HV-1000 hardness testing machine were used to investigate
the changes of the microstructure and micro-hardness distributions of the joints, respectively. In addition, scanning electron
microscope (SEM) was used to verify the formation of the metallurgical bonding at interfaces between AA6061-T6 and DP590,
and energy-dispersive spectroscope (EDS) was used to analyze the
thickness and corresponding chemical compositions of the bonded
regions.

2.3. Experimental setups and conditions

2.5. Mechanical tests
The SPR phase is executed by a servo powered Henrob SPR
device, as shown in Fig. 3(a). For each sample, the punch speed is
chosen to make sure the surface of the rivet head is ush with the
top materials upper surface. After that, the riveted joints are heated
by a Medar 5000s MFDC welding machine, which is equipped to
Fanuc R2000-Ib210f robot with six degrees of freedom for accurate
positioning, as shown in Fig. 3(b).
In this study, 13 kA welding current (maximum welding current provided by the welder) and 5 kN electrode force are adopted
for all the joints. Besides, to investigate the effect of heat input on
the properties of RW joints, the welding time is chosen to begin
with 50 ms and increases every 50 ms, until the trapped AA6061-T6

The strength of RW joints was evaluated by tensile-shear test.

The tensile-shear specimens were prepared in accordance with the
standard of GB/T2651-81, named Test Methods of Tensile-Shear of
Spot-Welded Joints. During all the tensile-shear testing, a spacer
was placed at the gripped region and clamped together with the
specimen to make sure the alignment of the specimen and tensile direction. For this test, the joint was made at the center of
the overlapped 38 mm 38 mm square area precisely, as shown in
Fig. 4. The tensile-shear tests were conducted at a constant speed
of 2.5 mm/min on a SUNS testing machine. At least three replicates
were made in the tests.

Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
and galvanized DP590. J. Mater. Process. Tech. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006

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Table 1
Chemical compositions and physical and mechanical properties of the materials used.
Material

Chemical composition (wt.%)

AA6061-T6
DP590

Si
0.69
C
0.18

Typical physical & mechanical properties

Melting point
( C)

Resistivity
(m 108 )

Yield strength
(MPa)

Ultimate tensile
strength (MPa)

Elongation (%)

Fe
0.46
Mn
2.2

Cu
0.33
P
0.035

Mg
1.06
S
0.03

650

288

334

13.3

1521

18.2

430.6

600

18

Fig. 4. Drawing of tensile-shear testing sample (unit: mm).

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Flow path analyses of electric current in RW process
During a typical resistance welding process, the electric current
ow is affected signicantly by the contact condition of the diverse
interfaces in the sheet combinations to be welded. Different from
the traditional RSW, there are at least ve main interfaces among
the rivet and sheets in a typical SPR joint, as shown in Fig. 5. When
the electric current was applied to the SPR joint using the aforementioned electrodes (referring to Fig. 2), the possible electric current
paths are complicated and hard to be predicted. Thus, to get further
knowledge about the inuence of electric current on the SPR joint,
it is necessary to study the initial contact condition of the SPR joint,
and then analyze the current ow path in the SPR joint.
The cross section of a typical SPR joint and the corresponding
locally magnied interfaces among the rivet, aluminum and sheet
steel are shown in Fig. 5. From the micrographs of the interfaces
a and b, it was found that even though the newly generated shear
surface in AA6061-T6 was rough, the high pressure generated from
extruding AA6061-T6 still made a sound contact between the rivet

and aluminum, especially at interface b. For the interface c, it was

clear that the surfaces of the top aluminum AA6061-T6 and bottom
steel DP590 separated from each other, which can be explained by
the springback of the deformed bottom DP590. For the similar reason, the contact between the rivet tip and bottom DP590 (interface
d) was also insufcient. For the interface e, under the effect of the
great extruding force produced by the rivet, the surfaces of AA6061T6 and bottom DP590 contacted with each other intimately. The
great contact condition of the interfaces a, b and e indicated that
they would be the potential electric current ow paths for the RW
process.
Based on the above initial contact condition analysis in a typical
SPR joint and the electrode design, the electric current will ow
into the joint from the top AA6061-T6 outside the rivet rstly, and
then most of electric current is expected to go through the well
contacted aluminum/rivet interfaces (interfaces a and b) into the
trapped AA6061-T6, instead of going through the aluminum/steel
sheet interface (interface c), for its bad contact condition. Afterwards, the current will pass through the trapped AA6061-T6 and
interface e centralizedly, then converges at the deformed region of
the bottom DP590, and nally outows from the lateral of the joint
bulging into the lower electrode, as illustrated in Fig. 6.
Thus, under the effect of resistance heat, the heat treatment
strengthening is expected to occur on local regions of the rivet
and the bottom steel, and meanwhile the brazing bonding is also
possible to be formed at the aluminum/steel interfaces.

3.2. Microstructure of RW joints

The typical cross-sectional views and corresponding
microstructures of the SPR joint and RW joints using LAE A
and LAE B under 150 ms are presented in Fig. 7. Generally, the
cross sections of RW joints (Fig. 7(e) and (i)) are quite similar in
macro view to the traditional SPR one (Fig. 7(a)). However, via

Fig. 5. Initial contact conditions of a typical SPR joint.

Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
and galvanized DP590. J. Mater. Process. Tech. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006

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Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the current ow path.

microscopic examination of the cross sections, it was found that

the microstructure of the SPR joints was affected by the heating
current. As shown in Fig. 7(b), the in situ microstructure of the
rivet in the SPR joint mainly consists of ne acicular tempered
martensite, and less residual austenite created by tempering also
should be contained in it. During the RW process using LAE A,
the rivet was heated rapidly and then cooled by the adjacent
aluminum. As a result, the residual austenite will transform into
martensite, and nally some lath martensite was regenerated in
this process, as shown in Fig. 7(f). It is noted that in Fig. 7(j), with
the increase of the current density using LAE B, the lath martensite
of the rivet in the RW joint becomes much coarser, accompanied
by the precipitation of a spot of carbides.
The microstructure of the deformed DP590 steel, as shown in
Fig. 7(c), had a ferritic matrix with dispersed martensite islands
at the grain boundaries. It is worth noting that during SPR phase,
DP590 was stretched signicantly around the rivet leg, which

resulted in a strong grain orientation there. During the heating process, the temperature at the lateral of the joint bulging rose quickly
since electric current converged there, as shown in Fig. 6. Therefore,
the martensite dissolved and transformed into ferrite and austenite, which resulted in the further growth of the ferrite. Then, most of
the newly generated austenite transformed into martensite owing
to the subsequent rapid cooling process, similar to the microstructure at the intercritical heat-affected-zone observed in RSW process
reported by Khan et al. (2008), as shown in Fig. 7(g). Furthermore,
since more heat was produced in local regions beside the contact
positions of LAE B, the peak temperature here was higher than that
of using LAE A, which increased the volume fraction of transformed
austenite signicantly. Then, the subsequent cooling process led to
the formation of uniformly mixed structure of massive ne-grained
martensite and ferrite (Fig. 7(k)) as reported by Zhao et al. (2013).
The microstructure of the trapped aluminum alloy (Fig. 7(d)),
mainly consisted of -Al solid solution matrix with a small amount
of undissolved strengthening phases, such as Mg2 Si and Al2 CuMg
distributed in it. Since most of the current passed through the
trapped AA6061-T6 during the welding phase, the precipitation
phases underwent a process of thermal cycling, which resulted
in the precipitation of strengthening phases with larger size, as
presented in Fig. 7(h). Furthermore, because part of the trapped
AA6061-T6 was overheated while using LAE B, the aluminum alloy
here was melted and columnar crystals grew along the cooling
direction, as presented in Fig. 7(l).

3.3. IMC formation in RW joints

The metallurgical bonding was only found at interface e (Fig. 5)
for the RW joints using both LAE A and LAE B under certain welding time. Figure 8(a) presents the details of a typical bonding at
the interface e produced using LAE B under 200 ms via SEM, and
it was found that metallurgical connection was achieved between
top AA6061-T6 and bottom DP590 steel. From the linear scanning
of EDS analysis given in Fig. 8(b), it was found that the transition between the aluminum and steel was rather gradual, which
was similar to the phenomenon found by Miles et al. (2010), and

Fig. 7. Typical metallographic structures of SPR joint and RW joints using LAE A and LAE B under 150 ms: (a) cross-sectioned SPR joint, and corresponding amplied views
of (b) rivet, (c) DP590 and (d) AA6061-T6; (e) cross-sectioned RW joint using LAE A, and corresponding amplied views of (f) rivet, (g) DP590 and (h) AA6061-T6; (i)
cross-sectioned RW joint using LAE B, and corresponding amplied views of (j) rivet, (k) DP590 and (l) AA6061-T6.

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Fig. 8. EDS analysis of interface e in a typical RW joint using LAE B under 200 ms.

indicated that the formation and composition of the intermetallic

compounds (IMC) at interface e were unstable. Moreover, the thickness of the IMC bonding here was quite thin that made the IMC
bonding free of brittleness, according to the work by Zhang et al.
(2007).
The inuence of heating time on the thickness of IMC at the
interface e was also measured by the linear scanning of EDS analysis. Three replicates were made for each case to reduce the
experimental errors, as presented in Fig. 9. It could be seen that
under the available heating time, IMC layer was only formed under
heating time of 400 ms using LAE A. In contrast, by using LAE B
the IMC was rst found under a heating time of 150 ms, because
the current density at the electrode contact local region increased.
Moreover, it was clear that the IMC thickness increased linearly
with the increased heating time.
3.4. Micro-hardness distribution in RW joints
Fig. 10 shows the effect of the electrode design on the microhardness distributions of the RW joints under various heating time.
It should be noted that for the joints using LAE B, the hardness
measuring position locates at the cross section along the middle
of the electrode contact region, as shown by the yellow line in
Fig. 10(a). Here four different measuring regions were selected for
micro-hardness evaluation: deformed region of the rivet (region

R), deformed DP590 at the lateral of the joint bulging (region S),
deformed AA6061-T6 outside the rivet (region A1), and deformed
AA6061-T6 inside the rivet (region A2).
The micro-hardness of region R versus heating time is presented in Fig. 10(b). As shown, when the heating time is less than
150 ms, the hardness of region R increased owing to the increased
volume of martensite and precipitation of carbides, but when the
heating time is longer than 150 ms, the increased heat input and
subsequent cooling process may result in the mixed structures of
coarse martensite and ferrite, which makes the micro-hardness
decrease. Meanwhile it is worth noting that the micro-hardness of
the deformed DP590 (region S) using LAE B, shown in Fig. 10(c), is
much higher than that of DP590 using LAE A, due to the generation
of the ne-grained martensite and ferrite (referring to Fig. 7(k)).
Moreover, the aluminum of region A1 and A2 becomes soft rapidly;
owing to the excessive heat input induced softening, as shown in
Fig. 10(d).
Moreover, the contradiction between formation of metallurgical
bonding and heat softening presented in Figs. 9 and 10 was worth
noting. In this research, to form intermetallic compounds at interface e, the power-on time should be longer than or equal to 400 ms
and 150 ms by using LAE A and LAE B, respectively. However, the
power-on time of 150 ms seemed to be an inection point of the
hardness of rivet steel (Fig. 10(b)) and aluminum (Fig. 10(d)) that
when the power-on time was longer than 150 ms, the hardness
decreased signicantly.
3.5. Quasi-static tensile-shear tests

Fig. 9. Effect of heating time on the IMC thickness of RW joints.

In order to quantify the quality of both RW joints using LAE A

and LAE B, they were compared with SPR ones on tensile-shear
strength, as shown in Fig. 11. The failure mode of all the tensileshear tests is the separation of the bottom DP590 from the rivet
and the top AA6061-T6, with serious aluminum and rivet bending
against the tensile direction, and limited deformation at structure
reinforced bottom DP590, which indicated that the hardness variation of regions R, A1 and A2 mainly determined the tensile-shear
strength of the joints here.
It is clear that the tensile strength for most of the RW joints
is greater than that of SPR ones due to the signicant increase of
hardness in rivet leg. Meanwhile, under relatively short heating
time, the static strength of RW joints either using LAE A or LAE B
increases with heating time, because the hardness elevation of rivet
leg is more signicant than the hardness reduction of aluminum, as
shown in Fig. 10. Under relatively longer heating time, the reduction
in hardness of both rivet and aluminum results in the decrease of

Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
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Fig. 10. Effects of the electrode design and heating time on the micro-hardness distributions of RW joints.

the joint strength, even though the IMC bonding forms at interface
e. As shown in Fig. 10, the hardness discrepancy between rivets of
joints using LAE A and LAE B is limit. On the contrary, resulting from
more heat input, the hardness reduction of aluminum (region A1

and A2) in joints using LAE B is larger than that joints using LAE A,
which makes most of the RW joints using LAE A stronger than the
joints using LAE B.
4. Conclusions
In this study, a novel fastening method, named RW was proposed to improve the robustness and strength of the SPR joints with
considerably unequal thickness, e.g. 3 mm AA6061-T6 + 1.2 mm
DP590 used here, by applying an electric current to the SPR joint,
using specially designed upper and lower annular electrodes. The
effects of both electrode design and heating time on the characteristics of RW joints were systematically studied, and the following
conclusions could be drawn:

Fig. 11. Effects of the electrode design and heating time on the tensile-shear
strength of RW joints.

(1) The electric current could change the original microstructure of

the medium carbon steel rivet, bottom DP590 and AA6061-T6
to some extent. On the other hand, the relatively longer heating
time contributed to the formation of IMC bonding between the
trapped AA6061-T6 and zinc coated bottom DP590.
(2) The micro-hardness of the rivet and bottom DP590 could be
improved a lot due to the heat treatment, by using annular
electrode under certain heating time, no matter what kind of
structure it is. However, the micro-hardness of AA6061-T6 was
decreased with increase of heating time, due to the effect of
heat softening.

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(3) Comparing with the traditional SPR joints, the RW ones could
obtain 12.1% and 6.7% higher tensile-shear strength by using
LAE A and LAE B, respectively. Nevertheless, the excessive heat
input might have negative effect on the joint performance, even
though the IMC bonding was generated as the heat input added.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the nancial support
of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
51275300 and 51322504), Program for New Century Excellent
Talents in University (NCET-12-0361), and the Natural Science
Foundation of Shanghai City (Grant No. 12ZR1415500).
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Please cite this article in press as: Lou, M., et al., Inuence of resistance heating on self-piercing riveted dissimilar joints of AA6061-T6
and galvanized DP590. J. Mater. Process. Tech. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.03.006