Journal of Welding and Joining

: Journal of KWJS. 2009;27(6):68-73. Published online January 13, 2010.; A Study of Weldability for Pure Titanium by Nd:YAG Laser(Ⅱ) - Welding Properties of Butt Welding; Jong-Do Kim, Myung-Sub Kwak, Moo-Keun Song, Seung-Ha Park

Abstract:   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.

Keywords :Pure titanium;STS304;Nd:YAG laser;Butt welding;Surface tension;Grain size