Bimetal composites can utilize the advantages of two materials, obtaining a property that a single metal cannot satisfy. Thus, bimetal composites have broad development prospects and are becoming a popular research field in material science [
1]. Typical bimetal composites, such as stainless steel/carbon steel [
2], titanium/steel [
3], titanium/aluminum [
4] and so on, have been used in a wide range of industrial fields. Magnesium alloys have wide application prospects in the automotive and transportation industries due to their low weight, high specific strength and good castability [
5]. However, magnesium alloys have the intrinsic drawbacks of poor corrosion resistance and low formability [
6], which limit the application of magnesium alloys. It is well known that stainless steel (STS) exhibits excellent corrosion resistance and mechanical strength, which makes it perfect for use in a wide range of industrial fields [
7]. Therefore, a bimetallic macro-scale composite material comprised of magnesium alloys and stainless steels cannot only protect from the corrosion of magnesium alloys but also utilize the strength of stainless steels [
8]. Besides, the characteristics of earthquake resistance and wave absorption of magnesium alloys [
9,
10] can make up for the deficiency of stainless steels in these areas. Stainless steels can also increase the strength, wear resistance and impact resistance of magnesium alloys [
11]. We know that Fe and Mg elements are incompatible according to Mg-Fe binary alloy phase diagram [
12]. Because of the difference in melting point (TM AZ31 = 630 °C and TM 2205 = 1455 °C), it is impossible to use fusion welding to melt these two kinds of metal at the same time [
13]. Consequently, bonding between STS and Mg alloys is considerably restricted.
In recent years, many investigators have been involved in the study of the bonding process of magnesium alloy and steel. A variety of joining techniques have been attempted to achieve the joining of magnesium and steel. Elthalabawy and Khan [
13] investigated the use of liquid phase forming interlayers to bond AZ31 to 316L. The experimental result indicated that stainless steel and magnesium alloy were successfully joined by using pure Cu interlayer at a eutectic temperature of 530 °C and pure Ni interlayer at a eutectic temperature of 510 °C. Bikulcius et al. [
14] attempted to improve the corrosion resistance of magnesium alloy by sputter coating with stainless steel. Yuan et al. [
15] studied diffusion-brazing technique of magnesium alloy and stainless steel. AZ31 and 304L were bonded by the diffusion-brazing process using pure copper as an intermediate layer. Miao et al. [
16] investigated the mechanical properties and microstructure of AZ31 and Q235 welded joints by laser penetration brazing. They discovered that joining magnesium alloy to steel was defect-free when the laser offset was 0.6 mm and the tensile strength reached a maximum of 185 MPa. Wei et al. [
17] designed a stirring pin to obtain magnesium alloy and stainless steel welding joint made using friction stir lap welding. Lee et al. [
8] fabricated Mg-Al-stainless steel 3-ply clad sheet using the rolling bonding process. The above methods which require the use of high-end devices and an intermediate layer are high-cost and complex operations. In addition, these methods easily form intermetallic compounds at high temperatures [
8,
18].
Explosive welding (EXW) is a very useful technology to directly clad similar materials and dissimilar materials, as a large combination of metal plates is impractical to bond with conventional welding techniques [
1,
19]. Explosive welding can facilitate the formation of a joint at lower temperatures and restrain formation of the brittle intermetallic phases [
20]. Similar and dissimilar metal and alloy combinations can be welded by using explosive welding techniques [
1,
2,
3,
4]. However, there is no report on explosive welding of magnesium alloy to stainless steel so far.
In the present investigation, 2205 stainless steel was explosive welded to AZ31B magnesium alloy. Mechanical properties such as micro-hardness, tensile shear strength and tensile strength of explosively welded composite plate were evaluated. The microstructural morphology and the elemental distribution near the weld interface were investigated by means of optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS). The aim of this study is to produce a composite and to examine the joining ability of 2205 stainless steel and AZ31B magnesium alloy with explosive cladding. As a result, this study is a new contribution in the field of Mg-steel laminated composite manufacturing.