• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.107-114
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• 2011

CP steel was developed to reduce the weight and increase the strength of car body. When it was welded using state-of-the-art disk laser welding, the effected of boron on the microstructure and hardness were investigated. Welding power was fixed at 3.5kW and welding speeds were 4,8 and 12m/min. Full penetration occurred in welding speed of 12m/min and weld bead was almost unchanged with boron contents. But the welding speed increased, the upper and lower bead were narrowed. In a welding speed of more than 8m/min, underfill defects were formed on the bead bottom. The hardness of weld zone was somewhat fluctuation in fusion zone and HAZ showed the highest hardness values. The hardness of each region showed little change with the boron contents, and softening phenomenon occurred in the HAZ near the base metal regardless of the boron contents.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2020

At present, 24 nuclear power plants are in operation nationwide as the main power source responsible for about 27% of Korea's electricity, and five nuclear power plants are currently under construction. Issues of nuclear safety and reliability have always existed, but after the Fukushima accident, ensuring reliability has become an even more important issue for safety. Compared to other kinds of accidents, the initial response after a nuclear accident is more important than any other accident. Prior to accidents, it is important to be able to predict and judge the accident in advance for the sake of prevention. In this research, non-destructive inspection methods for existing pipe welds include radiographic, ultrasonic, magnetic particle practice, and liquid penetration testing. For this experiment, carbon steel pipes like that of the material used in nuclear pipes were adopted, and specimen welded to the flange (Flange) were manufactured. After testing, the weld specimen were not damaged through the infrared thermography (IRT) experiment. This study attempted to improve the safety of carbon steel pipes through a comparative analysis of finite element analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.978-983
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• 2008

An application of innovative laser+GMA hybrid welding process is presented for reducing bead humping defects in high speed welding and increasing side wall fusion in narrow groove welding without torch or wire oscillation. In this hybrid process, the laser heat input is applied adjacent to the weld pool at a relatively low power density to produce a wider, flatter weld bead. In bead on plate in sheet metal gauges, the hybrid process was able to produce hump-free welds from 70ipm (${\sim}1780mm/min$) to over 150ipm (${\sim}3810mm/min$) of the travel speed compared to the un-assisted GMAW process. A square-butt joint in 15mm A572 Gr50 steel welds was investigated. A square butt joint with a gap of 3.2mm was filled with 6 passes. Liquid Nitrogen calorimetry and innovative $CO_2$ laser reflective optics were also developed to demonstrate the concept of hybrid welding.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.7 s.184
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• pp.59-66
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• 2006

In laser welding, automatic seam tracking is important to adjust the laser head position in real time as it moves along the seam. Also if the joint gap is occurred, filling the missing material into the joint gap is necessary to prevent welding defects and bad welding quality. In general, the joint gap width is not constant along the seam due to a variety of reason. So it is essential to control the filler wire speed into the joint gap to acquire good welding quality. This paper describes an intelligent filler wire feeding device which can control 3-dimensional seam tracking and the filler wire speed by measuring the gap position and the joint gap width in laser welding. We call this device as Smart Micro Control system(SMC). To achieve this objective, we assessed weld quality in 2mm sheets of A16061 which had various gap width by using the developed device. From the experimental results, It was found the possibility that the developed device could be used in welding various 3-dimensional structures.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.2
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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.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.43-48
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• 2005

This work was carried out to obtain sound welds and to select a most suitable binary metal joint among three different dissimilar binary metal combinations such as Zr-4/Ta, Mo/Ta and Ti/Ta(seal tube/sensor sheath) joints fur the instrumented nuclear fuel irradiation test. To do this, Taguchi experimental method was employed to optimize the experimental data. In addition, metallography, micro-focus x-ray radiography and hardness test were conducted to examine the welds. From the weld bead appearance, penetration depth and bead width as well as weld defects standpoint, Zr-4/Ta joint is suggested for the circumferential joining between a seal tube and a sensor sheath. The optimized welding parameters based on Zr-4/Ta joint are suggested as well.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.410-414
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• 2011

This study was carried out to evaluate the microstructures and mechanical properties of a friction stir welded Ni based alloy. Inconel 600 (single phase type) alloy was selected as an experimental material. For this material, friction stir welding (FSW) was performed at a constant tool rotation speed of 400 rpm and a welding speed of 150~200 mm/min by a FSW machine, and argon shielding gas was utilized to prevent surface oxidation of the weld material. At all conditions, sound friction stir welds without any weld defects were obtained. The electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) method was used to analyze the grain boundary character distributions (GBCDs) of the welds. As a result, dynamic recrystallization was observed at all conditions. In addition, grain refinement was achieved in the stir zone, gradually accelerating from 19 ${\mu}m$ in average grain size of the base material to 5.5 ${\mu}m$ (150 mm/min) and 4.1 ${\mu}m$ (200 mm/min) in the stir zone with increasing welding speed. Grain refinement also led to enhancement of the mechanical properties: the 200 mm/min friction stir welded zone showed 25% higher microhardness and 15% higher tensile strength relative to the base material.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.48-54
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• 2016

The use of Zn coated steel has increased in the automotive industry due to its excellent corrosion resistance. Conventionally the BIW(body-in-white) structure and the hang-on parts have been made of Zn coated steel and more recently Zn coated steel began to be applied in the chassis parts. During gas metal arc (GMA) welding of the chassis part, lap fillet joint used to be adopted but spatter generation and porosities are most important concerns. In the industrial applications, an intentional joint gap was made to avoid the weld defects but it is not easy to control the size of joint gap. In this research, gas tungsten arc (GTA) is combined with GMA welding where GTA precedes GMA. As pulsed arc was adopted as GMA, GTA was oscillated along the longitudinal direction by pulsing GMA, but the arc oscillation did not disturb the molten droplet transfer of GMA welding. By increasing the distance between GTA and GMA, the length of weld pool increased and porosity could be reduced. Moreover porosity in the welds was fully removed when the distance between two arcs was 15 mm.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.2823-2834
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• 2023

Austenitic stainless steel welds (ASSWs) of nuclear components undergo aging-related degradations caused by high temperature and neutron radiation. Since irradiation leads to the change of material characteristics, relevant quantification is important for long-term operation, but limitations exist. Although ion irradiation is utilized to emulate neutron irradiation, its penetration depth is too shallow to measure bulk properties. In this study, a systematic approach was suggested to estimate mechanical properties of ion irradiated 308 ASSW. First of all, weld specimens were irradiated by 2 MeV proton to 1 and 10 dpa. Microstructure evolutions due to irradiation in δ-ferrite and austenite phases were characterized and micropillar compression tests were performed. In succession, dislocation density based stress-strain (S-S) relationships and quantification models of irradiation defects were adopted to define phases in finite element analyses. Resultant microscopic S-S curves were compared to verify material parameters. Finally, macroscopic behaviors were calculated by multiscale simulations using real microstructure based representative volume element (RVE). Validity of the approach was verified for the unirradiated specimens such that the estimated S-S curves and 0.2% offset yield strengths (YSs) which was 363.14 MPa were in 10% agreement with test. For irradiated specimens, the estimated YS were 917.41 MPa in 9% agreement.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.124-129
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• 2014

The piping system accounts for a large portion of the machinery structure of a plant, and is considered as a very important mechanical structure for plant safety. Accordingly, it is used in most energy plants in the nuclear, gas, and heavy chemical industries. In particular, the piping system for a nuclear plant is generally complicated and uses the reactor and its cooling system. The piping equipment is exposed to diverse loads such as weight, temperature, pressure, and seismic load from pipes and fluids, and is used to transfer steam, oil, and gas. In ultrasound infrared thermography, which is an active thermography technology, a 15-100 kHz ultrasound wave is applied to the subject, and the resulting heat from the defective parts is measured using a thermography camera. Because this technique can inspect a large area simultaneously and detect defects such as cracks and delamination in real time, it is used to detect defects in the new and renewable energy, car, and aerospace industries, and recently, in piping defect detection. In this study, ultrasound infrared thermography is used to detect information for the diagnosis of nuclear equipment and structures. Test specimens are prepared with piping materials for nuclear plants, and the optimally designed ultrasound horn and ultrasound vibration system is used to determine damages on nuclear plant piping and detect defects. Additionally, the detected images are used to improve the reliability of the surface and internal defect detection for nuclear piping materials, and their field applicability and reliability is verified.