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Materials and Design 29 (2008) 14801484

Short Communication

Investigation of eect of the stand-o distance on interface characteristics of explosively welded copper and stainless steel
Ahmet Durgutlu *, Hasan Okuyucu, Behcet Gulenc
Technical Education Faculty, Gazi University, 06500 Besevler, Ankara, Turkey Received 15 June 2007; accepted 16 July 2007 Available online 19 August 2007

Abstract In this study copper and stainless steel were explosively welded with dierent stand-o distance. The eect of stand-o distance on bonding interface was investigated. Experiments showed that, increasing the stand-o distance transform the bonding interface from smooth to wavy shape. However, the excessive stand-o distance leads huge waviness then a smooth bonding in interface. In explosive welding, when a wide stand-o distance is chosen, wave length and it is amplitude increase the extension of grains along the explosion due to the plastic deformation. It is also found that the hardness of regions close to bonding interface was increased because of collision. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Explosive welding is a solid state welding method which is used for bonding two or more metallic plates via high pressure obtained from an explosion [1,2]. Explosive welding, which is also known as explosive bonding, is carried out with an inclined high speed collision. Although it is described as a cold process, since no external heat input is supplied, some local high temperature regions may occur due to the dynamics of the system. Some amount of heat occurs with the explosion. Because of not enough time, a heat transfer cannot be observed between the metallic plates [35]. In explosive welding, metal plates to be joined, are collided with each other with an inclined angle and at high speed caused by explosion. Inclined collision leads to a tiny layer separated from both of the bonding surfaces as a metallic jet. The thickness of this tiny layer is less than 0.05 mm. While separating this layer, it also cleans the surfaces of bonding plates. Explosive welding has two basic geometric shapes which are inclined bonding and bonding

Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 312 212 8767; fax: +90 312 212 0059. E-mail address: durgutlu@gazi.edu.tr (A. Durgutlu).

of parallel plates. The schematic representation of explosive welding is given in Fig. 1 [69]. Cleaned metal surface are compressed together under pressure which is caused by explosion. The energy of atoms of two metals decreases while they are getting closer then an attractive force or bonding force occurs between the atoms of two plates. These atomic forces bond the both of the plates to each other on the entire surface of the plates [1012]. While the explosive welding is used for bonding the same kind of two metallic plates, it is also a promising commercial technique for bonding the corrosion resistant materials and for bonding dierent kinds of metallic plates [13,14]. The welding parameters are important to have a high quality bonding. Stand-o distance (s), explosive ratio (R), explosion speed of explosive, collision speed of yer plate, collision speed, welding speed and anvil are the parameters to have a good interface and bonding quality [9,15]. Stand-o distance, which is chosen by considering the thickness of yer plate, is an important parameter aecting the quality of bonding interface. The shape and the dimension of wavy interface of bonding are aected by changing the ratio of stand-o distance and the yer plate. Bonding interface surface area and the deformation amount are

0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2007.07.012

A. Durgutlu et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 14801484 Table 2 Explosive ratio, explosive amount and yer plate speed

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Explosive ratio Flyer plate weight Explosive amount Flyer plate speed (R) (m) (g) (g) (m R) (m/sec) 1.5 480 720 1120

Samples were prepared by cutting the welded plates parallel to the direction of the explosion for the microstructural examination of the bonding interface. For the standard metallographic techniques, the samples were etched with a Viella solution. Moreover, the images were taken by the optical and scanning electron microscopes. The Vickers hardness of the welded samples were taken in regions from center line of bond to outer surface. Three kilogram load was performed on the samples. Fig. 1. Schematic representation of explosive welding.

3. Result and discussion changed by the ratio of stand-o distance and yer plate. In this study, copper and stainless steel plates were bonded with explosive welding and interface characteristics were investigated by hardness measurements, waviness of interface.
2. Materials and experimental procedure
Stainless steel and pure copper plates were welded by an explosive welding method with a parallel geometry to determine the eect of stand-o distance on interface characteristics. The dimensions of stainless steel and pure copper plates were 200 200 1.5 mm and 200 200 2 mm, respectively. The hardness of stainless steel and copper plates were 400 HV and 113 HV, respectively. The explosive used in this work is Anfo (ammonium nitrate that is contains 6% fueloil) and a detonator was used to initiate the explosion. Copper has a 99.98% purity and the chemical composition of stainless steel is given in Table 1. It has been investigated that explosive ratio should be chosen proportional to the weight of yer plate. To have a good bonding collision, speed of yer plate should be at least 1000 m/sec [9,15]. It is also indicated that stand-o distance should be at least half of the thickness of the yer plate. The collision speed of yer plate is calculated by Gurney equation given in Eq. (1) (for the explosive welding). According to Eq. (1), each explosive has a unique explosion energy value. This unique energy is dened as the Gurney energy [2,9]: 3 2 V p2 2E 15 m 4 m c c2 1

All of experiments with dierent parameters gave successful bonding and microstructural and hardness results of bondings are given below. 3.1. Microstructure Microstructural images in Fig. 2 show that waviness of interface increase, with increasing the stand-o distances. Interface of the sample welded with 0.5t stand-o distance is almost linear (Fig. 2a). The interface of sample which is welded with the biggest stand-o distance (3t) is the most wavy interface as seen in Fig. 2d. While the interface of sample welded with the stand-o distance of 0.5t is linear, interfaces of samples welded with stand-o distances of 1t, 2t and 3t are getting increasingly wavy. The sample welded with 2t stand-o distance has an interface with a wavelength of 750 lm and a wave amplitude of 130 lm image Fig. 2c. Moreover, the sample welded with 3t stand-o distance, wavelength and amplitude of wave were measured to be 950 lm and 150 lm, respectively (Fig. 2d). When a big stand-o distance was chosen, the wavelength will be too big and the interface of bonding will look as if it is linear [9,16]. It is also observed from the interface images that increasing the stand-o distance would lead to enter each metal then to be locked up mechanically. This mechanical locking can be clearly seen from the interface images in Fig. 2. As a result, mechanical locking improves the bonding strength of the plates. Increasing the waviness of interface increases the bonding surface area of the plates. In the explosive welding process, two plates to be welded get closer then collide. Grains close to the bonding interface were deformed and elongated along the bonding direction. Deformation amount of the surface area varies depending on the interface shape. SEM (scanning electron microscopy) micrographs of interface area of welded stainless steelcopper plates are presented in Fig. 3. It is clearly seen that the SEM images of the samples were bonded and the grains close to the interface were elongated along the interface line. It was reported in the literature that in explosive welding, a hard and brittle intermetallic is formed during the welding and this intermetallic aects the bonding quality

In this equation: Vp is the speed of yer plate; 2E is the Gurney energy; m is the weight of the yer plate; and c is the weight of the explosive. The collision speed of yer plate with the base plate is calculated by the Gurney equation. Energy value of the Anfo is taken as Gurney energy. Stainless steel was chosen as the yer plate and the amount of explosive was determined proportional to the weight of the yer plate (to achieve a speed of at least 1000 m/sec). Explosive ratios, explosive amount and the speed of yer plate are given in Table 2. The experiments were carried out by choosing dierent stand-o distances (s) as the other parameters were kept constant. Four dierent stand-o distance; which were 0.5t, t, 2t and 3t (t is the thickness of the yer plate), were chosen. An anvil with a dimension of 1500 1500 100 mm was used for the experiments. A 5 mm thick rubber layer was used as the buer layer between the anvil and the base plate to protect the anvil from the defects caused by acoustic aects. Table 1 Chemical composition of the stainless steel Elements % weight Cr 17.99 Ni 9.78 Mn 1.46 Fe 69.58

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Fig. 2. Optical microscope images of bonding interfaces.

with a negative manner [4,9,17,18]. Figs. 2 and 3 show the bonding interface and from these pictures, it is clearly seen that no intermetallic layer was formed between the bonding layers. Consequently, bonding quality was not aected by this layer. 3.2. Hardness Hardness measurements of the explosively welded stainless steel and copper interface were taken at center and various distances from centerline that are 150, 800 and

1350 lm. The hardness values are given in Fig. 4 and tabulated in Table 3. As it is seen in Fig. 4 and Table 3, hardness values of bonding interface and outer face of layers were increased with increasing the stand-o distance due to the cold deformation. For the 0.5t stand-o distance, while the hardness of stainless steel was 400 HV before the welding it increased to 419 HV and 415 HV in distances from the centerline of 150 lm and 1350 lm respectively after the welding. It increased just 3 HV in the distance from the centerline of 800 lm after the welding. It can be concluded that, a

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Fig. 3. SEM images of the bonding interface.

oriji nal ma lzeme Original material

s= 0,5 t

s= t

s= 2 t

s= 3 t

430 380

Table 3 Hardness values of metal couples welded with dierent the stand-o distance Sample Materials Plate hardness Hardness of metal couple (HV) (HV) Distance from interface (lm) 150 800 1350 419 129 425 134 430 142 431 143 403 113 403 114 405 114 405 115 415 127 422 130 428 139 429 139

Stainless steel
330

Bonding interface

Hardness (HV)

280 230 180 130 80

Copper

(s = 0.5t) Stainless Copper (s = t) Stainless Copper (s = 2t) Stainless Copper (s = 3t) Stainless Copper

steel 400 113 steel 400 113 steel 400 113 steel 400 113

1350

800

150 0 150 Distance from interface ( m)

800

1350

Fig. 4. Hardness graph of metal couples welded with dierent stand-o distance.

signicant cold deformation did not happen in the middle of stainless steel layer. For the sample that was welded with the biggest stand-o distance, hardness values of bonding interface area and outer face area of stainless steel layer were increased to 431 HV and 429 HV, respectively after the

welding. Hardness changes of copper layer were similar to that of stainless steel. As it can be seen in Table 3 and Fig. 4, there is no big dierence between hardness values of samples welded with 2t and 3t stand-o distances. In 2t stand-o distance upper plate was reached to its maximum capacity and some amount of deformation hardening on the outer faces of bonding layers was happened. While hardness of samples welded with 2t stand-o distance were clearly higher than that of the samples welded with 0.5t stand-o distance.

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However, wave lengths of bonding interfaces of samples welded with 0.5t, 2t and 3t stand-o distances dier much from each other (Fig. 2). It is also reported in the literature [9,19] that hardness of bonding interface and outer faces of bonding layers were increased after the explosive welding because of cold deformation. The reason for hardness increase in bonding interface is the cold deformation caused by high speed collision of layers. Hardness increase in the lower face of lower layer is due to the collision of lower layer to anvil and the reason for hardness increase in the upper face of yer plate is the sudden shock of explosion. On both sides of two bonding layers, a very tiny portion of crossections was hardened because of explosion and the hardness of the rest of the crosssections remained the same. 4. Conclusions 1. No joining fault was formed, on the interface, and also no melting voids and intermetallic compounds were observed from the SEM images. The joining of copperstainless steel was successful after the explosive welding. 2. Welding interface was at when the welding was carried out with lower stand-o distance. Wavy interfaces were observed on the interface when using higher stand-o distance. Wavelength and amplitude of the waves were getting higher with increasing the stand-o distance. 3. When the stand-o distance is too big, bonding interface looks as if linear at short distance because of very big wavelength. 4. Increasing the wavelength bonding interface increases the bonding surface area. 5. Grains were elongated in the explosive direction on the interface due to plastic deformation during the explosion. 6. The entire hardness values of surfaces of welded plates were bigger than that of the original materials due to the deformation hardening during the explosion and collision of both materials to each other. 7. Hardness of bonding interface and outer surfaces of bonding plates increase with increasing the stand-o distance.

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