Resistance Spot Welding (RSW) is a joining process widely used in theindustry, especially for the joining of metal sheets in the automotive industrydue to it high simplicity and repeatability. As the body of automotive vehicles,assembled by this process, contains more than 3000 weld spots, it is a criticalissue to understand the RSW, and especially the variations that may result ofthe process. Several parameters influence the dimensional quality of theassembly; the variation of the parts resulting from the precedent process steps(especially the stamping), the tooling variations and the distortion induced bythe RSW at a local scale. On one hand, current works often assumed that the RSW do not inducesensible distortion due to the heat and so only focus on a dimensional analysisof the parts and tooling variations. On the other hand, many works dealt withthe local simulation of the RSW but did not extend it to the global assembly. Itshould be of interest to combine the knowledge of both the local behavior of aweld spot and of the global distortion of structures due to tools and partsvariation. Considering the assembly of metal sheets obtained by stamping, themost of the current state of the knowledge on RSW and distortion in assemblyshould be made. The work presented here focus on giving a global comprehension ofthe spot welding process. Firstly at a local scale with a Finite ElementAnalysis on the software SYSWELD of the local behavior of the assembledstructure during the formation of a spot weld. Then the global behavior of astructure during the assembly is studied. Part variations resulting from thestamping process are measured and used to run a FEA on the commercialsoftware ANSYS. Key Words: Resistance Spot Welding; metal sheets assembly;distortionanalysis
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