Titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V properties advantage gives it a well-known reputation for decades as a reliably material used in a wide range and specific application of resistance spot welded joint such as automotive & aviation products. High strength joint is created depends on the welding parameters used in resistance spot welding. Particular problems occurred about the effect of welding parameters on pure titanium and titanium alloy mechanical and physical properties from previous researches. Some pores and acicular α’ phase appeared in the microstructure, which caused partial interfacial failure mode in the tensile testing. This study is conducted to study the influence of welding parameters for Ti-6Al-4V weld nugget mechanical and physical properties and discover its optimum level of parameters. Tensile-shear testing is used to observed the optimum level. In the optimum level microstructure result reveals that in the weld nugget zone as a fusion zone the lamellar α+β is dominantly observed, this contrasts sharply with the base metal and the heat-affected zone where the primary α and β phase appear to be more dominant. The highest hardness value is discovered in the weld nugget area near the center proving the contribution of the lamellar α+β on this area.

Resistance spot welding (RSW) is one of the most effective welding methods for titanium alloys, in particular Ti-6Al-4V. Ti-6Al-4V is one of the most used materials with its good ductility, high strength, weldability, corrosion resistance, and heat resistance. RSW and Ti-6Al-4V materials are often widely used in industrial manufacturing, particularly in automotive and aerospace industries. To understand the phenomenon of resistance spot weld quality, the physical and mechanical properties of Ti-6Al-4V spot weld are essential to be analyzed. In this study, an experiment was conducted using the Taguchi L9 method to find out the optimum level of the weld joint strength. The given optimum level sample was analyzed to study the most significant affecting RSW parameter, the failure mode, the weld nugget microstructure, and hardness values. The high heat input significantly affect the weld nugget temperature to reach and beyond the β-transus temperature. It led to an increase in the weld nugget diameter and the indentation depth. The expulsion appeared in the high heat input and decreased the weld nugget strength. It was caused by the molten material ejection in the fusion zone. The combination of high heat input and rapid air cooling at room temperature generated a martensite microstructure in the fusion zone. It increased the hardness, strength, and brittleness but decreased the ductility.

Stainless steel (SS) and Titanium alloy (Ti) are the most commonly used materials in many industrial fields such as the automotive and aerospace industry. Stainless steel has good corrosion resistance and titanium alloy has an extremely lightweight characteristic. The combination of both materials has become a tremendous innovation in the industrial sector. Resistance spot welding which has commonly applied in many industrial fields is a good consideration to join these two dissimilar materials due to the high efficiency that could be achieved by using this method. However, the way of joining these dissimilar materials should be carefully considered due to the significant difference in mechanical properties between SS and Ti. In the present study, 3 mm of SS316L and Ti6Al4V sheets were joint under the resistance spot welding method with an aluminum interlayer. The optimized welding parameters were provided under the Taguchi method L9 orthogonal array along with the mechanical properties’ investigation. The optimum welding parameters were 11 kA of weld current, 30 Cycles of welding time, and 5 kN of electrode force which produced 8.83 kN tensile-shear load of the joint. The mechanical structure analysis shows the different morphology between stainless steel and titanium interfaces and the intermetallic compound layer was formed on the SS/Al and Al/Ti interfaces. The EDX analysis shows the atomic diffusion-reaction on the application of aluminum as an interlayer on the SS/Ti joint.