Occurrence of sub-critical heat affected zone liquid metal embrittlement in joining of advanced high strength steel

Advanced high strength steels (AHSS) used in automotive structural components are commonly protected using zinc coatings. However, the steel/zinc system creates the potential for liquid metal embrittlement (LME) cracking during welding. In this study, the effect of angular welding electrode misalignment as recommended by industry was investigated and resulted in LME cracking in the sub-critical heat affected zone (SCHAZ) which is a region where LME has not been previously observed. The largest misalignment case of 6° resulted in bending of the work piece and an angled weld nugget/heat affected zone (HAZ), causing LME cracks in the lower temperature HAZ regions. SEM and EBSD analysis characterized the LME crack area as the SCHAZ and below the Ac1 transformation temperature. Furthermore, dilatometry analysis showed the Ac1 temperature to be approximately 660 °C, meaning LME occurred below the traditional 700 °C minimum threshold. In addition to this novel observation of LME before transformation and at low temperature, it was also noted that only misalignment beyond 2° promoted LME cracking. The low angle 2° case was observed to be statistically the same using a Student’s t-test (α = 0.05) on 6 welded samples for LME crack severity compared to a standard 0° case.