OPTIMIZATION OF WELDING PARAMETERS FOR RESISTANCE SPOT WELDING OF TRIP STEEL USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

Because of the environmental problems, automotive companies are trying to reduce the weight of car body. Therefore, TRIP(TRansformation Induced Plasticity) steels, which have high strength and ductility have been developed. Welding process is a complex process; therefore deciding the optimal welding conditions on the basis of experimental data is an effective method. However, trial-and-error method to decide the optimal conditions requires too many experiments. To overcome these problems, response surface methodology was used. Response surface methodology is a collection of mathematical and statistical techniques that are used in the modeling and analysis of problems in which a response of interest is influenced by several variables and the objective is to optimize this response. This method was applied to the resistance spot welding process of the TRIP steel to optimize the welding parameters.