Heat conduction effects during laser welding

Abstract: Since the invention of the laser in 1960, its use has been growing steadily. New laser sources with high beam power and high beam quality provide potential for further growth. High quality beams can be shaped by optical tools, such as scanners or Diffractive Optical Elements, DOE, to almost any beam shape, enabling innovative laser process solutions. For welding in particular, a tailored beam can be used to control the melt pool and to optimise the temperature field and cycle. For example, joining of electrical components like battery cells becomes more common due to the shift to electrical vehicles. This is a field of applications where laser welding with a tailored beam has high potential due to the need of tightly controlled design tolerances or processing temperatures and in turn electrical and mechanical properties. The research presented in the thesis encompasses the heat flow generated from tailored laser beams, the thermal effects on the weld shape and on other quality criteria, the generated residual stress and its influence on fatigue crack propagation. For the sake of simplicity, melt flow was not considered in the calculations, which was discussed, too. The first three papers apply predictive mathematical modelling for the temperature field while the fourth paper experimentally derives the thermally induced residual stress distribution back from measured fatigue crack propagation. Paper I contains a FEM-based numerical heat flow study of a conduction mode laser welding case where a C-shaped overlap joint is desired. The quality criteria demand the welding process to be tightly controlled in terms of laser power and pulse time. Contrary to expectations, the joint geometry can significantly deviate from the laser beam C shape. As a continuation, in Paper II various quantitative indicators were derived and studied as part of the numerical simulation, in order to identify a suitable beam shape and in turn a DOE-design. Paper III presents a semi-analytical mathematical model that was developed for the heat flow in pulsed conduction mode welding for spatially and temporally shaped laser beams. As an alternative to FEM, the model is fast due to its analytical nature, which enables iterative beam shape optimization and DOE-design. By studying different beam shapes and the induced temperature fields, the potential and limits of the model were demonstrated and discussed. Paper IV is a study on residual stress that is thermally induced during the heating and cooling cycle of laser keyhole welding. Acceleration measurement of the crack propagating across the weld during fatigue testing turned out to be a suitable method to derive the residual stress distribution along the crack, including its alteration during the cracking. Comparisons with FEM-based stress analysis provide a link back to the temperature field induced by the laser, which enables optimization, e.g. by beam shaping.