Characterization of the inhomogeneous constitutive properties of laser welding beams by the micro-Vickers hardness test and the rule of mixture

A novel approach has been proposed to characterize the inhomogeneous mechanical properties of weld materials by using the micro-Vickers hardness test combined with the rule of mixture. This proposed method has introduced the influences of the inhomogeneous properties of weld materials by considering the variations in plastic behaviour across the weld cross-section. The inhomogeneous properties of laser welding beams for tailor welded blanks (TWBs), which were three different types of combinations of DX56D and DP600 automotive steel sheets, were extracted by using this proposed method. The instrumented indentation tests were conducted to verify the measured inhomogeneous properties of weld materials. The fact that the calculated true stress–strain curves agreed well with the experimental ones has confirmed the reliability and accuracy of the proposed method.