The maximum temperature rise in electrode tip is estimated from the measured heat input to the electrode during one spot welding. It reaches as high as about 700°C for ordinary spot welding conditions of steel plates of 0.8-3.2 mm thickness.
For calculation the electrode cross section is assumed constant along the electrode length, and the effect of wave form of heat flow from the tip is investigated. Q in Table 1 is the measured heat input to each side of the electrode per one welding under the conditions shown in the table. θ
2 in the table shows the calculated results using the equation (9) under the following assumption, i.e. the heat flow wave form is taken as Fig. 11(a), heat flow time T
H is assumed as equal to current flow time T
0 shown in the table, the cross section of the electrode is taken as S
2 corresponding to the root diameter of the electrode.
Fig.14 shows the temperature distribution curves along the length when a constant heat H=1000 cal/cm
2 sec flows in from the electrode tip for the duration T
H=0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5sec. Curves A-D show the temperature rise when the distance x
0 of cooling end from the tip is infinity and A, B'-E' for x
0=1 cm. For the calculation of the effect of cooling water, it is assumed that equation (33) holds, according to the model shown in Fig. 13 (h is taken as 1 for Fig. 14 and 18).
Heat flow time T
H is divided into two parts as shown in Fig.17 and the temperature at the moment C is calculated as the sum of the parts. Temperature due to the part AB is calculated using equation (49), T
1 being time constant defined as in equation (43) and the period of BC is chosen far longer than time constant T
2.
It is easily shown that the magnitude of temperature fluctuation at a point I cm distant from the tip is negligible when intermittent heat input cycle is less than 1 sec/spot and we see that the cooling effect of cooling water is only effective to reduce the average temperature rise in the electrode under intermittent welding.
Table 3 shows the temperature rise at the tip for cyclic heat flow from the tip for various combinations of x
0, h, T
H and T
w (i.e. cyclic period). The value shows the temperature at the moment C in Fig. 19 for H=1000 cal/cm
2 sec.
Fig.2, 4 shows the oscillogram of the temperature rise at 2 mm distant from the tip (Fig.1). Electrode pressure is also shown in Fig.2.
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