Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121 – 128

The effect of surface roughness, oxide film thickness and

interfacial sliding on the electrical contact resistance of aluminium
E. Crinon b, J.T. Evans a,*
a
Materials Di6ision, Department of Mechanical Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, Herschel Building, Uni6ersity of Newcastle upon Tyne,
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
b
Now with Centre Techniques des Systems Na6als, Toulon Na6al, Toulon, France

Received 2 April 1997; received in revised form 14 July 1997

Abstract

Contact resistance measurements were made on aluminium alloy sheet with a configuration relevant to electrical resistance spot
welding. Previous work has shown that a small amount of sliding is required at the interface to break down contact resistance
when the material has a thin, insulating coating. Sliding on a macroscopic scale occurs at the electrode-sheet interface but not at
the faying surface. For this reason, the contact resistance at the faying surface is high and its behaviour with applied force is
observed to be anomalous. However, local sliding on a microscopic scale can occur at the faying surface, depending on the surface
roughness. The effect of surface roughness and oxide film thickness was investigated in the present work. In addition, the degree
of sliding required to break down contact resistance was quantified in experiments in which relative rotation was induced at the
faying surface. It is estimated that a sliding displacement of only about 10 mm is required to produce a dramatic reduction in
contact resistance. The results are interpreted in terms of Holm’s constriction resistance theory of microscopic spots of
metal-to-metal contact within a mechanical contact area largely insulated by the presence of the surface oxide films. © 1998
Elsevier Science S.A.

Keywords: Surface roughness; Oxide film thickness; Contact resistance

1. Introduction contact resistance can make nugget formation difficult

to control in the early part of the welding cycle [6].
Contact resistance is an important parameter in elec- Coatings are often applied to enhance the properties
trical resistance spot welding [1 – 3]. Here, a large cur- of aluminium alloys for structural applications (e.g.
rent is passed through two water cooled copper weld bonding). Since these coatings are electrically insu-
electrodes which also clamp the sheets to be welded. lating, the contact resistance of the material is higher
Clearly, the contact resistance at the faying surface than in un-coated material [7,8]. In a previous paper [9]
(Fig. 1(a)) is critical since weld nugget growth is ini- a large difference between the contact resistance charac-
tiated here. A large contact resistance is advantageous teristics measured at the faying surface and those at the
for the formation of a single spot weld since it can electrode-sheet interface was reported for coated alu-
contribute significantly to Ohmic heating at the start of minium sheet. First, the contact resistance was always
the welding cycle. This is particularly important in the significantly higher at the faying surface than at the
spot welding of aluminium alloys which have high bulk electrode-sheet interface for the same material. Second,
electrical and thermal conductivity [4,5]. In practice, the contact resistance-force characteristics were found
however, the contact resistance should not be too high, to be regular for the electrode-sheet interface but irreg-
otherwise too much current is diverted to previously ular at the faying surface. With regular behaviour the
formed, neighbouring spot welds. In addition, very high contact resistance falls with increasing force and the
contact resistance observed in the unloading part of the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 44 191 2227911; fax: + 44 191 cycle is smaller than is observed during loading.
2228563. Anomalous behaviour is observed with coated speci-

0921-5093/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

PII S 0 9 2 1 - 5 0 9 3 ( 9 7 ) 0 0 5 0 8 - X
122 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128

Fig. 1. (a) Spot welding configuration; (b) comparison of contact resistance-force curves for the two interfaces using commercially coated
aluminum sheet. The faying surface contact exhibits higher contact resistance and anomalous contact resistance-force behaviour. Data from James
et al. [9].

mens which is often the reverse of regular behaviour. be obtained, albeit with overall high levels of contact
An example is shown in Fig. 1(b) which compares resistance. The results are discussed in terms of the
contact resistance-force curves for electrode-sheet con- classical theory of contact resistance as developed by
tact (regular) and faying surface contact (irregular) for Holm [11] and Greenwood [12].
an aluminium alloy sheet with a thin, insulating coat-
ing. At the faying surface, the contact resistance is often
observed to increase with increasing force and to re- 2. Materials and method
main high when the specimen is unloaded. This irregu-
lar behaviour is now known to be an experimental The material used in the investigation consisted of 2
artefact, as explained below in Section 2. The difference mm thick, commercially produced, hot rolled alu-
between electrode-sheet contact and faying surface con- minium alloy (5000 series) strip. The Vickers hardness
tact was much less when the coating was removed by of the material was 52 kgf mm − 2. Surface roughness
grinding and irregular contact resistance-force charac- and texture may vary with the commercial alloy strip,
teristics were not observed. It was also demonstrated [9] depending on the final stage of rolling. In addition,
that a small amount of sliding at the interface is aluminium strips for weld-bonding applications may be
required to break down high contact resistance im- coated with inorganic films of various thickness to
parted by the coating. With symmetrical electrode produce desirable surface properties. These factors were
pairs, sliding on a macroscopic scale occurs at the simulated in this work. Specimen surfaces were ground
electrode-sheet interface but not at the faying surface and polished before testing and three levels of surface
[9]. However, it was found that sliding could be induced roughness were obtained by finishing at different stages
at the faying surface by using asymmetrical electrode in the process. Specimens were orientated such that the
pairs, resulting in a large reduction in faying surface final scratch marks ran parallel to the long edge of the
contact resistance and elimination of the anomalous test strip. When a pair of specimens were tested in
contact resistance-force characteristics. faying surface contact they were orientated at right
Although macroscopic sliding does not occur at the angles so that the elongated asperities on mating sur-
faying surface, local sliding on a microscopic scale faces were also at right angles. Surface roughness and
could occur, depending on the roughness of the surface. texture were measured with a Micromap optical profi-
But, the effectiveness of surface roughness in breaking lometer. The results are shown in Table 1.
down the contact resistance is likely to depend on the Specimens were treated after grinding and polishing
thickness of the insulating film [10]. The object of this to produce oxide films with three ranges of film thick-
paper is to present results showing the effect of these ness [13]. Specimens tested directly after surface grind-
factors on contact resistance. It is also reported below ing are referred to in the text as ‘clean’, although, of
that the irregular contact resistance-force behaviour [9] course, there will be a thin oxide film ( : 5 nm) at the
can be traced to small scale mechanical instabilities surface. Some specimens were oxidised in air at 300°C
during loading, associated with the loading system. If for 24 h. This is expected to produce an oxide film with
special steps are taken to make the loading very thickness in the range 20–100 nm. Other specimens
smooth, regular contact resistance-force behaviour can were oxidised in boiling water for 5 min. This is ex-
 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128 123

pected to produce a Boehmite layer between 0.2 and 2 movement of the strip. It was thus possible to produce
mm thick. small, controlled rotations of between 0.02 and 1°.
Details of the method of measuring contact resis- It is useful to know the radius r0 of the mechanical
tance-force curves have been given elsewhere [9]. The contact area as a function of the applied load P. This
specimens were loaded using domed copper electrodes was obtained from an elastic-plastic finite element anal-
with a 50.8 mm radius of curvature. A current of ysis of the loading experiments [9]. For loading only
between 0.3 and 3 A supplied by a Tinsley micro- and for a 2 mm thick sheet, the results were fitted to an
Ohmeter was passed though the strips and the potential empirical equation expressed in the form
drop at pre-determined locations was measured using r0 = re(P/P1)m, (1)
pointed, hardened steel electrodes. In a previous paper
[9], contact resistance was measured using a loading where P1 and m are arbitrary constants and re is the
frame in which force was applied via a screw thread. It radius of curvature of the electrodes. For the electrode-
is now believed that the irregular contact resistance- sheet interface the arbitrary constants take the values
force behaviour (Fig. 1(b)) previously reported arose P1 = 3.07× 103 kN and m= 0.5. For the faying surface
from the loading system itself, which produced low interface P1 = 7.37× 106 kN and m= 0.2. These rela-
levels of mechanical shock as the specimen was loaded. tions predict radii that are in reasonable agreement
These do not affect contact resistance at the electrode- with observations made from indentation marks left on
sheet interface but severely affect the faying surface the specimen surfaces after loading. With an axial load
contact resistance, making it highly unpredictable. An of 10 kN, for example, r0 = 2.9 mm for the electrode-
investigation at the start of this work showed that the sheet interface and 3.4 mm for the faying surface.
contact resistance of coated specimens in faying surface
contact was highly sensitive to low levels of mechanical
vibration. For example, a light blow to the bench 3. Results
supporting the loading rig was capable of increasing or
The ultra-smooth loading method adopted produced
decreasing the contact resistance by anything up to
regular contact resistance-force curves with oxidised
400% of its current value. Though the spots of metal-
material as indicated in Fig. 2. Contact resistance fell
to-metal contact within the mechanical contact area are
with increasing applied force and the contact resistance
so sparse in faying surface contact, low level mechani-
at any value of force on unloading was generally
cal disturbance seems capable of breaking existing con-
smaller than at the same force during the initial load-
tacts or making new ones in a chaotic way. To suppress
ing. As the force is increased the contact area increases
perturbations of this sort it was found to be necessary
and also the number of contacting asperities per unit
to load the specimens very smoothly using a hydraulic
area is expected to increase. Consequently the contact
jack in which oil was bled into the cylinder at a low
resistance falls. Plastic deformation occurs in the con-
rate. By adopting this loading method and by avoiding
tact during loading but recovery on unloading involves
unwanted vibrations it was possible to produce regular mainly elastic deformation. Therefore, the contact resis-
contact resistance-force behaviour in all the specimens tance curve for unloading is expected to lie below the
that were tested in this work. loading curve. Without the special precautions taken to
In some experiments the effect of controlled sliding at produce smooth loading, anomalous behaviour of the
the faying surface was investigated. One strip was sort shown in Fig. 1(b) occurs with oxidised material in
clamped and, whilst under a constant axial force. The faying surface contact.
other strip was rotated about the central axis by a The effect of surface roughness and surface treatment
torque, and applied through masses connected to the on contact resistance is shown in Fig. 2(a)–(c). Due to
strip with a string and pulley arrangement. The relative the wide range of resistance values produced by differ-
rotation of the strip was measured by recording the ent treatments, the contact resistance-force curves are
plotted here with semi-logarithmic scales. Note that
Table 1 using logarithmic scales for the contact resistance axis
Surface treatments to give different degrees of roughness flattens the contact resistance-force curves and gives the
appearance that force has less effect than is actually the
Treatment, final Ra (mm) Peak to Wavelength
case.
stage valley (mm) (mm)
The effect of the oxide film is greatest in the speci-
6 mm diamond 0.03 0.48 30 mens with the smoothest surfaces (Ra= 0.03 mm, Fig.
125 mm silicon 0.31 3.11 50 2(a)). There is almost six orders of magnitude difference
carbide between the general level of contact resistance in the
260 mm silicon 1.02 7.64 100
clean specimens and specimens oxidised in boiling wa-
carbide
ter. The material oxidised in air occupies an intermedi-
124 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128

Fig. 2. (a) – (c) Contact resistance-force curves showing the effect of surface roughness and oxidation treatment on the faying surface contact
resistance.

ate level. It can be seen that the application of force has of the specimen oxidised in air is also reduced by the
relatively little effect on the contact resistance in these greater surface roughness, but clean specimens are
specimens compared to the effect of surface treatment. much less affected.
This contrasts with the behaviour of the surfaces with The contact resistance of the roughest surfaces
intermediate roughness (Ra =0.31 mm, Fig. 2(b)). Here, (Ra= 1.02 mm, Fig. 2(c)) are the least affected by
the contact resistance of the specimen oxidised in boil- oxidation. The contact resistance of the specimen oxi-
ing water falls by about four orders of magnitude as the dised in boiling water falls by two orders of magnitude
force is increased to 5 kN. It is envisaged that this as the force is increased to 10 kN but the contact
reflects the effect of plastic deformation and local slid- resistance observed on unloading is of a similar magni-
ing of the contacting asperities. The contact resistance tude to that of the specimen oxidised in air.
 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128 125

The results in Fig. 2 show that surface roughness is contact resistance of all specimens to : 0.2 mV. Rota-
effective in breaking down contact resistance. When tion \ 0.8° produced little further change in contact
taken with the comparison of faying surface and elec- resistance.
trode-sheet contact [9], the implication is that sliding on
the microscopic scale is induced by surface roughness.
However, small-scale macroscopic sliding can also be 4. Discussion
produced by inducing a relative rotation in the contact-
ing sheets. This was investigated in the following tests. The connection between interfacial sliding and the
breakdown in contact resistance of coated aluminium
3.1. The effect of sliding induced at the faying surface was established in a previous paper [9]. This is confi-
rmed in this work in tests on aluminium with oxidised
In tests to measure the effect of relative sliding at the surfaces (Fig. 4). By analogy with the evidence derived
faying surface, a constant axial load of 1.3 kN was from different macroscopic deformation modes, it is
applied to a specimen pair. One strip was clamped and postulated that a high degree of surface roughness can
a sideways acting force was then applied to the other also assist in the breakdown of contact resistance by
strip, to produce small, controlled rotation about the inducing localised sliding, on a microscopic scale, when
central axis in the plane of the strip. The relation asymmetrical asperities come into contact. However,
between applied torque and the relative rotation of a the effectiveness of surface roughness in breaking down
specimen pair is shown in Fig. 3. At torques B 1 N m, contact resistance depends on the thickness of the oxide
the recorded deformation is mainly elastic. Between 1 film as is apparent in the results shown in Fig. 4.
and 2 N m some permanent deformation was recorded, Williamson [10] proposed that contact pressure on its
indicating that a small amount of sliding occurred at own is not very effective in displacing surface films. An
the interface. A substantial amount of sliding was de- indication that this is so is also given by indentation
tected at torques \3 N m. studies of metals with hard surface coatings. Even with
The contact resistance at the faying surface is plotted the very high pressures produced beneath a pyramidal
as a function of the angle of relative rotation in Fig. 4. indentor, surface films remain largely in place even
Only a very small rotation was required to produce a though they may be extensively cracked [14–17].
large reduction in the contact resistance for the oxidised Williamson [10] postulated that although plastic defor-
specimens. The contact resistance of the clean speci- mation of asperities may crack the film, metal-to-metal
mens was only affected a little by sliding and the results contact is not readily established unless metal can ex-
for these specimens are not shown in Fig. 4. A relative trude through the fissures. On the other hand, these
rotation of B 0.2° produced an abrupt fall of more results demonstrate that even a small amount of in-
than seven orders of magnitude in the contact resis- duced sliding combined with pressure can displace sur-
tance of the specimens with the smoothest surfaces face films to produce a large increase of metal-to-metal
(Ra=0.03 mm) that had been oxidised in boiling water contact. A schematic illustration of the effect of sliding
Fig. 4(a). Other specimens exhibited substantial though on contacting asperities envisaged here is shown in Fig.
less dramatic drops in contact resistance (Fig. 4(a–c)). 5(a). A scanning electron micrograph showing scoring
at the faying surface after sliding is shown in Fig. 5(b).
Essentially, a relative rotation of B0.8° reduced the
We now consider a crude estimate of the extent of
metal-to-metal contact in terms of the constriction re-
sistance model of contact resistance. Contact resistance
can arise from the constriction effect originally iden-
tified by Holm [11]. For example, if current flows across
the interface between two semi-infinite, conductive
solids, with resistivity r, through a circular constriction
of radius a, the resistance R is given by the expression
r
R= . (2)
2a
It has long been established that because of micro-
scopic roughness, the area of physical contact between
two surfaces is much smaller than the nominal contact
area. Consider a circular nominal contact area of radius
r0 between two sheets (Fig. 6). This can be regarded as
Fig. 3. Relation between applied torque and relative rotation for a a well-defined mechanical contact area in the sense that
specimen pair under an axial force of 1.3 kN. the effect of contact could be detected because of the
126 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128

Fig. 4. Effect of sliding on contact resistance (axial load 1.3 kN).

r 3pr n n 1
indentation left on the surface of the specimen. How- R= + % % ; i" j, (3)
n
32n 2 i j sij
ever, within the area of nominal mechanical contact, 2 % ai
there are smaller areas of real physical contact. With i

oxidised surfaces, the area of metal-to-metal contact is where Sij is the distance between the centres of the i-th
even smaller than the area of physical contact. Green- and the j-th contact spots. If the mechanical contact
wood [12] considered n circular conducting spots of area is filled with isolated electrical contact spots, Eq.


(3) can be approximated by
variable radius ai lying within a circle of radius r0. He
showed that the contact resistance is composed of two
R= r
1
+
1
,
n (4)
terms, i.e. 2nā 2a
 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128 127

Fig. 5. (a) Envisaged effect of sliding at an interface on production of metal-to-metal contact; (b) scanning electron micrograph of polished surface
(Ra =0.03) after a relative rotation of 3° under an axial load of 1.3 kN.

where ā is the mean spot radius and a is the so-called metal conduction occurs in these cases and that con-
Holm radius. For a mechanical contact area well filled duction must be by some other mechanism of current
with small spots, a :r0. Eq. (2) allows a lower limit to flow through the oxide film [18,19]. Nevertheless, the
be set for contact resistance, i.e. if all the mechanical fact remains that by inducing a small amount of sliding
contact area were electrically conducting with metal-to- at the interface the contact resistance can be made to
metal contact (n = 1), the lower limit of contact resis- fall by many orders of magnitude and the only likely
tance is Rmin :r/2r0. With an axial load of 1.3 kN, for mechanism for this involves establishing metal-to-metal
example, the radius of nominal mechanical contact is contact spots where none previously existed.
2.3 mm (Eq. (1)). Taking r = 5 ×10 − 8 Vm gives In considering the effect of the presence of oxide
Rmin :0.01 mV. Thus, the contact resistance specified films, it would be most instructive to be able to com-
by Eq. (4) must be \Rmin. The smallest contact resis- pare the true area of metal-to-metal contact with the
tance obtained in Figs. 2 and 3 is an order of magni- total area of nominal mechanical contact. Unfortu-
tude \ Rmin, so even under the most favourable nately, this cannot be done directly using contact resis-
circumstances relatively little metal-to-metal contact is tance measurements alone. On the other hand, a
established at the faying surface. measure of the scale of metal-to-metal contact can be
An upper bound for contact resistance can also by obtained by considering the following procedure [9].
noting that the order of the radius of the smallest Imagine placing all the conducting spots in Fig. 6(a) to
conceivable conduction spot is 3× 10 − 10 m (the inter lie along a straight line so that they touch at their
atomic spacing) and by assuming that only one spot peripheries (Fig. 6(b)). The total length of the line of
exists within the mechanical contact area. The upper spots is 2nā. This length can be compared with the
limit for constriction resistance with metal-to-metal diameter of the known mechanical contact area 2r0 in
contact is therefore, Rmax :105 mV. In reality, because the following way. Assume that 2nā2r0 so that the
of Ohmic heating leading to local melting, the upper Holm radius a can be taken to be equal to r0. Eq. (4)


limit is likely to be much smaller than Rmax. However, can be rearranged to give the ratio
some values of contact resistance in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3
are \ Rmax. It must be concluded that no metal-to-
2nā
=
2r0R
−1
n −1
. (5)
2r0 r
The terms on the right side of Eq. (5) are known,
since r0 can be obtained from Eq. (1), so the ratio of
lengths 2nā/2r0 can be calculated from the experimental
data. Consider the results in Fig. 3. After sliding is
induced, the contact resistance falls to approximately
0.2 mV for the whole range of specimens tested. Using
Eq. (5), with r0 = 2.3 mm, this is equivalent to the
length 2nā : 264 mm. If one judges the mean radius of
the conducting spots to be approximately 2 mm (Fig.
Fig. 6. Schematic illustration of rearrangement of metal-to-metal 6(b)), there would be about 130 such conducting spots
contact spots. within the nominal area of contact. This is a small
128 E. Crinon, J.T. E6ans / Materials Science and Engineering A242 (1998) 121–128

amount of contact considering that plastic deformation (4) Oxide films increase contact resistance to the
and sliding have occurred. It indicates the effectiveness greatest extent with smooth surfaces. With symmetrical
of the oxide films in preventing extensive metal-to- electrode pairs, high contact resistance is very resistant
metal contact. There is even less metal-to-metal contact to being broken down by the application of axial force.
when there is no macroscopic sliding. For instance, (5) In contrast to the effect of axial force, a small of
there is essentially no metal-to-metal contact in the relative sliding at the faying surface interface is very
smoothest specimens oxidised in boiling water (Fig. effective in breaking down high contact resistance.
2(a)), even under an axial force of 10 kN (r0 =3.4 mm).
For the rougher surfaces at 10 kN, the length 2nā is in
the range 25–75 mm. References
Faying surface contact resistance is an important
parameter in the spot weldability of aluminium sheet [1] Z. Han, J. Orozco, J.E. Indacochea, C.H. Chen, Am. Weld. Soc.:
Weld. Res. Suppl. Weld. J. 68 (1989) 363s.
[17,18]. It is found that room temperature, low current
[2] E.P. Patrick, J.R. Auhl, T.S. Sun, Understanding the process
measurements of the type reported here correlate with mechanisms is key to reliable resistance spot welding aluminum
weldability. However, contact resistance relevant to auto body components, SAE Technical Paper 840291, Warren-
spot welding is not just a single quantity since the dale, PA, 1984, p. 15 096.
passage of an increasing current (\ 100 A) at the start [3] M.M. Vogler, S.D. Sheppard, Am. Weld. Soc.: Weld. Res.
Suppl. Weld. J. 76 (1993) 231s.
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[4] D.J. Browne, H.W. Chandler, J.T. Evans, J. Wen, C.J. Newton,
metal contact by melting and enlarging the existing Am. Weld. Soc.: Weld. Res. Suppl. Weld. J. 74 (1995) 339s.
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computer modelling and spot welding performance is C.J. Newton, Am. Weld. Soc.: Weld. Res. Suppl. Weld. J. 74
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[6] D.J. Browne, C.J. Newton, D.R. Boomer, Optimisation and
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[14] J.C. Knight, T.F. Page, I.M. Hutchings, Surf. Eng. 5 (1989) 213.
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