A novel approach to control thermal induced buckling during laser welding of battery housing through a unilateral N-2-1 fixturing principle

• This study explored the distortion control methods during the laser welding of thin sheets to thick/rigid components. • A unilateral N-2-1 fixturing is proposed to minimise transverse residual stress leading to buckling distortion during laser welding of full-scale battery housing. • An FEM model is developed to evaluate the effect of heat input, welding sequence, fixturing and clamp opening and closing cycle to mitigate buckling distortion. • Welding sequences have a negligible effect on distortion in a closed system, due to constraints leading to uniform thermal cycling. Battery housing (BH) in modern electric vehicles must meet demanding functional requirements. The design and geometry of the BH become intricate to prevent damage during collisions and to ensure absolute impermeability to gases and water during operation. Moreover, in the pursuit of a lightweight BH, manufacturers rely on high-strength 6xxx aluminium alloys, posing significant challenges for the welding processes. It is estimated that up to 30 m of weld length is required during the construction of battery housings including joining the lid and under-shield to the main structural frame and joining the ribs to the frame for standard vehicles. Due to the increasing use of thin sheets for lightweighting the structure, thermal-induced buckling may occur and generate critical dimensional unconformities going beyond design tolerances. This underpins the need to optimise fixturing design to control thermal-induced buckling. This paper goes beyond the state-of-the-art “N-2-1″ approaches for fixturing thin and deformable parts and proposes the new principle of “unilateral N-2-1 fixturing”. The driving idea is adding unilateral restraints to the direction of thermal contraction, which ultimately causes buckling; and, keeping the direction where the thermal expansion occurs in a free state. The methodology is based on three main steps: (1) physics-based modelling of parts and fixtures using a thermo-mechanical FEA simulation; (2) calibration of the weld heat source using metallographic data; (3) validation using optical scanning technology. The methodology was demonstrated during the laser beam welding of a high-strength aluminium 6xxx thin deformable lid to a rigid high-strength 6xxx aluminium extrusion frame. Results indicated that the thermal induced buckling deformation was reduced from 15 mm, when using the state-of-the-art fixturing approach, to approximately 2 mm with the proposed methodology.