Product Code: ICAL09_P128

Fibre Laser Welding for Lightweight Design
Authors:
Jan Karlsson, Luleå University of Technology; - Sweden
Alexander Kaplan, Lulea University of Technology; Lulea Sweden
Presented at ICALEO 2009

Two different high strength steel grades have been welded by a fibre laser as a fillet corner joint. The purpose of the experiments is to use thinner materials of higher strength as a weight reduction strategy. The sensitivity of the welding process to the beam inclination angle, the beam positioning and the focal plane position were studied. High-speed imaging, process emission monitoring, measurement of the weld surface topography, mechanical testing and FE-analysis have been used to analyze the process and the resulting weld. The combined study by these methods gives a more comprehensive picture for studying the weld quality. The Bifurcation Flow Chart (BFC) as a new method has been applied to standardize and generalize the findings.