Search Results (4)

Laser beam welding (LBW) is a highly demanded process for premium-quality joints in aeronautic, energy, or industrial sectors, where flexibility and low-heat-affected zones are required. One of the main applications of LBW in the near future is expected to be the welding of new turbine engine components, which are typically made of Nickel-based superalloys. However, parameter setup is time- and resource-consuming, where experiment-based methods are typically employed. Therefore, the process development is far from an efficient resource utilization. In the present work, an LBW numerical model is developed and experimentally validated through a machine-integrated monitoring system. The LBW model is based on solving the heat transfer problem produced by the laser and provides the resulting temperature field, as well as the weld bead dimensions. The model includes a variable heat source that automatically adapts to the welding regime, conduction, or keyhole. For the model validation, two Inconel 718 sheets of different thicknesses are butt-welded and an error of around 10% is obtained, which ensures the validity of the model. Full article

This study aimed to explore the feasibility of using airborne acoustic emission in laser beam butt welding for the development of an automated classification system based on neural networks. The focus was on monitoring the formation of joint gaps during the welding process. To simulate various sizes of butt joint gaps, controlled welding experiments were conducted, and the emitted acoustic signals were captured using audible-to-ultrasonic microphones. To implement an automated monitoring system, a method based on short-time Fourier transformation was developed to extract audio features, and a convolutional neural network architecture with data augmentation was utilized. The results demonstrated that this non-destructive and non-invasive approach was highly effective in detecting joint gap formations, achieving an accuracy of 98%. Furthermore, the system exhibited promising potential for the low-latency monitoring of the welding process. The classification accuracy for various gap sizes reached up to 90%, providing valuable insights for characterizing and categorizing joint gaps accurately. Additionally, increasing the quantity of training data with quality annotations could potentially improve the classifier model’s performance further. This suggests that there is room for future enhancements in the study. Full article

Welding and the behavior of the weldments are important, since welding of high strength low alloy (HSLA) steels is a conventional method for manufacturing industrial parts. This work conducts a comparative investigation of microstructural characteristics and mechanical properties for joints of 16-mm-thick HSLA Q890 steel produced by multi-layer multi-pass shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) with filler wire and single-layer autogenous laser beam welding (LBW). The mechanical properties of the welded joints were assessed in terms of tensile and impact using butt joints. The results show that tensile failure occurred in the base metal during the tensile tests for most of the trials. The ultimate tensile strength and percent elongation of the LBW welded joint (973.5 MPa and 10%) are higher than those of the SMAW joint (951 MPa and 2.9%) due to the filler filling process of the SMAW process. The Charpy impact energy of the weld metal (16.4 J and 15.1 J) is lower than that of the heat-affected zone (18.5 J and 19.5 J) in the LBW joint and the SMAW joint. Full article

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is tightening regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ship operations. As a result, the number of vessels using liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuel has increased rapidly. At this time, ASTM A553-1 (9% nickel steel) is being used as a tank material for storing LNG as fuel because of its higher strength than other cryogenic materials. Currently, shipyards are manufacturing LNG fuel tanks using the flux cored arc welding (FCAW) method using 9% nickel steel material. However, fabrication through FCAW has two drawbacks. The first is that the welding filler is 20 times higher cost than the base metal, and the second is that the total production cost increases because the thickness of the tank increases due to the strength drop near the heat affected zone (HAZ) after welding. The laser welding of A553-1, which does not require additional welding fillers and has no yield and tensile strength reduction in the HAZ, can overcome the drawbacks of FCAW and ensure price competitiveness. Through the study of Part I (penetration shape by bead on plate), the penetration characteristics of laser welding were studied and the optimized welding conditions of 15 mm thickness of A553-1 were obtained. With optimized conditions, butt laser welding tests of A553-1 material were conducted in this study, and mechanical properties, which are tensile/yield strength, hardness, bending strength, and impact property on the cryogenic temperature of the weld zone after laser beam welding, are confirmed by comparing those after FCAW. In the case of tensile/yield strength, hardness, and bending strength at weldment, the values of laser beam welding (LBW) are higher than those of FCAW, and the value of the impact test after FCAW is higher than that of LBW, but both values are satisfied in ASTM. Through these conclusions, it is confirmed that there are no mechanical property problems in replacing the existing FCAW with LBW. Full article