• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.95-101
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• 2002

After high power lasers are avaliable in the commercial market, the number of applications of the laser welding has been increased in manufacturing industries. Although the tailored blank laser welding of butt jointed steel sheets is well known recently in the automotive industries, the lap joint laser welding is a new technology to the automotive manufacturing people as well as the design people. But the deep penetration laser welding seems to be preferred to the partial penetration welding for the lap joint welding in the automotive manufacturers because the partial penetration is a serious deflect for the butt joint. In this study, the feasibility of partial penetration welding fur the lap joint $CO_2$ laser welding was studied fur the 1mm thick 390MPa high strength steel sheets for automotive bodies. The process window of the lap joint partial penetration welding was obtained from experiments with the gap size and the welding speed as process parameters. The partial penetration welding was found excellent on the basis of the tensile shear strength and sectional geometry. The bead width, input energy Per volume, tensile-shear strength, deformation energy and the sectional geometries after tensile-shear tests of partial penetration welded specimens are compared with those of full penetration welded specimens with a series of gaps and welding speeds.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.137-146
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• 2008

Nd:YAG pulse laser welding of stainless steel plate was simulated to find welding condition by using commercial finite element code MARC. Due to geometric symmetry, a half model of AISI 304 stainless steel plate was considered and user subroutines were applied to boundary condition for the heat transfer. Material properties such as conductivity, specific heat, mass density and latent heat were given as a function of temperature. As results, Three dimensional heat source model for pulse laser beam conditions of butt welding has been designed by the comparison between the finite element analysis results and experimental data on AISI 304 stainless steel plate. Nd:YAG laser welding for AISI 304 stainless steel was successfully simulated and it should be useful to determine optimal welding condition.

• 한국레이저가공학회지
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• 제13권3호
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• pp.19-26
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• 2010

In this study, fundamental experiment was conducted with various strength of UHSS (Ultra High Strength Steel) by $CO_2$ laser. And then, butt and lap joint laser welding with boron alloyed steel and Al-Si coated boron alloy steel have been done by changing laser beam feature, existence of gap and existence of coating layer to know welding characteristics of those materials. As a result, in case of fundamental experiment with various strength steel, hardening was found in the weld metal of all tested materials and softening was found at the heat affected zone of SGAFC 1180. In case of laser butt welding of UHSS, mechanical properties was improved by using small laser beam diameter and Al-Si coating layer caused fracture of weld metal. In case of laser lap welding of UHSS, Al-Si coating layer resulted in formation of intermetallic compound at the fusion boundary where fracture occurred. Al-Si coating layer caused lowering mechanical properties of weld metal.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.165-173
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• 2004

Laser beam welding is increasingly being used in welding of structural steels. The laser welding process is one of the most advanced manufacturing technologies owing to its high speed and deep penetration. The thermal cycles associated with laser welding are generally much faster than those involved in conventional arc welding processes, leading to a rather small weld zone. Experiments are performed for 304 stainless steel plates changing several process parameters such as laser power, welding speed, shielding gas flow rate, presence of surface pollution, with fixed or variable gap and misalignment between the similar and dissimilar plates, etc. The following conclusions can be drawn that laser power and welding speed have a pronounced effect on size and shape of the fusion zone. Increase in welding speed resulted in an increase in weld depth/ aspect ratio and hence a decrease in the fusion zone size. The penetration depth increased with the increase in laser power.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.88-92
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• 2006

Laser-rotating arc hybrid welding was introduced by combining $CO_2$ laser and rotating gas metal arc welding. While the arc rotation enhances the weld pool motion, it reduces the undercut formation which is one of most critical weld defects in the conventional laser-arc hybrid welding. This research investigated the bead characteristics according to the welding parameters such as frequency of rotation, welding voltage, shielding gas composition and interspacing distance between laser and we. The welding parameters were selected to reduce spatter generation and ensure sound weld beads fur bead welding and butt welding with various joint gaps. Gap bridging ability was improved, such that the sound weld beads were achieved for butt joint with up to 2mm joint sap, with no adjustment of CTWD(Contact tip-to-workpiece distance) and electrode diameter.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제31권2호
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• pp.57-62
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• 2013

Magnesium has good castability and limited workability, so its products have been manufactured by almost casting processes. In this study, a pulsed Nd:YAG laser was used to butt-weld the sand casting magnesium alloys. And the effect of welding conditions such as peak power, pulse width, welding speed was evaluated in detail. As a result of this study, large underfill and plenty of spatter taken place under the conditions with high peak power. Thus, it is recommended to use low peak power and long pulse width to obtain good welds with deep penetration. It is also confirmed that the welding speed and pps(pulse per second) are directly connected at weld defects such as underfill, porosity.

• 한국자동차공학회논문집
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• 제20권5호
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• pp.53-64
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• 2012

Deep and narrow welds can be produced by laser welding at high welding speeds with a narrow heat-affected zone (HAZ) and little distortion of the workpiece. This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of laser welding at automobile component manufacture. Microstructure observation, hardness test, tensile test and fatigue life test are performed by using the fiber laser welded SPFC590 steel sheets which is used widely in the manufacture of automotive seat frame. Three kinds of specimens are only a SPFC590 steel plate, quasi-butt joint plate and lap joint plate by laser welding. The following results that will be helpful to understand the static strength, fatigue crack initiation and growth mechanism were obtained. (1) The tensile strength of quasi butt joint specimens nearly equal to base metal specimens, but lap joint specimens fractured in shear area of weld metal. (2) The fatigue strength of quasi-butt joint specimen was approximately 8 percent lower than that of the base metal specimens. Furthermore, the lap joint specimens were less than 86 percent of the base metal specimens. (3) The lap joint fatigue specimens fractured at shear area in high level stress amplitude, while fractured at normal area in low level stress amplitude. From these results, the applicability of the laser welding to the automobile component is discussed.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제27권6호
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• pp.68-73
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• 2009

Recently, as titanium and titanium alloys are being increasingly used in wide areas, there are on-going researches to obtain high quality weld zone. In particular, growing interest is being drawn to laser welding, which involves low heat input and large aspect ratio in various welding processes and can facilitate shield in atmospheric condition compared with electron beam welding. The first report covered the analysis of embrittlement by the bead color of weld zone through quantitative analysis of oxygen and nitrogen and measurement of hardness as basic experiment to apply laser welding to titanium. Results indicated that the element that affect embrittlement the most was nitrogen, and as embrittlement and oxygenation go on, bead color changed to silver, gold, brown, blue and gray. This study performed butt welding of pure titanium and STS304 by using 1kW CW Nd:YAG laser, and to find out basic physical properties, evaluated welding performance by laser output, welding speed, root gap and misalignment etc, and examined mechanical properties through tensile stress and Erichsen test. The reason particles of pure titanium welded metal and HAZ are greater than STS304 is because they are pure metal and do not include many impure elements that work as nuclei in case of resolidification, thus becoming coarse columnar crystals eventually. In addition, the reason STS304 requires more energy during welding than pure titanium is because the particle size of base metal is smaller.

• 한국레이저가공학회지
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.19-26
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• 2003

6061 aluminum alloy sheets were I-square butt welded using a continuous wave Nd:YAC laser. Heat inputs were varied from 54.6 to 80 J/mm for butt welding using different sets of the laser power and the weld speed. I-square butt welds were also made with and without Ar shielding gas. The effect of Ar shielding gas and heat input on the mechanical properties and formability was investigated using Vickers hardness, transverse-weld tensile and bulge test. Porosity on the weld beads and sections and hot crack on the fracture surfaces of transverse-weld tensile test specimens were investigated using optical and scanning electron microscopy The experimental results showed that mechanical properties and formability of 6061 aluminum alloy laser welds were degraded compared to those of base metal. Mechanical properties and formability of 6061 aluminum alloy laser welds were not substantially changed when Ar shielding gas was supplied or heat inputs were varied.

• 한국공작기계학회논문집
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.1-12
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• 2007

S45C steel has been widely used in industrial applications, such as crank shafts, gears, main spindles of machine tools, connecting rods, etc., because of its distinguished mechanical property. In the convention arc welding of S45C plates without heat treatments, it is possible for welding defects to take place, such as a void or a hot-crack, due to a high carbon composition of S45C. Laser welding process is widely used in the industrial field due to its numerous advantages: a small heat affected zone(HAZ), deep penetration, high welding speed, single-pass thick section capability, and small distortion after welding. The objective of this research works is to investigate the influence of the process parameters, such as power of laser and welding speed, on the characteristics of laser welding for the case of nickel coated and nickel uncoated S45C steel. As the result of the experiment, in case of butt welding, nickel coated S45C steel has a uniform formation of welding zone and it was judged that the welding nature was better as inner defects and the quantity of spatter were formed relatively fewer than nickel uncoated S45C steel.