Study on pulsed Nd:YAG laser butt welding of high carbon steel

Abstract

Welded joints of high carbon steels have very important applications in the industries. This paper is about the experiments and investigation carried out to recognize the influence of variation of Laser parameters on strength, HAZ and microstructure of the resultant welded work piece. Nd:YAG Laser welding is done using laser welding machine(Alpha Laser, ALT200) for butt welding at altered values of beam power and beam Scan speed. The material dimension was -6 mm x 2.5 mm x .93 mm and there were a total of 12 weld pieces. Tensile testing of the prepared specimen was conducted using universal testing machine (UTM) to find out the peak load and the tensile stress at which the specimen breaks. The microstructure and weld zone was inspected using optical microscope. Result indicates that the tensile strength and weld depth increase with the increase in beam power and decreases with the increase in laser scan speed.