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Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow

Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler Wire

Conference Paper · March 2019

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Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow
Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler Wire
R. Borrisutthekul 1,*, Yukio Miyashita 2, Yoshiharu Mutoh2
1
Suranaree University of Technology, 111 University avenue, Muang, Nakhon-Ratchasima, Thailand
2
Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, Japan
*
Corresponding author’s email address : mutohyoshiharu@yahoo.co.jp
Abstract
As the first step of the present study, the single laser beam
was used as the heat source for laser welding of
AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint with Al-12Si filler wire. The
results shows the penetration depth of molten zone could
not be controlled to be shallow and the widening of
welding width to improve the joining failure load could
not be obtained. The maximum failure load for the single
beam laser welding was only about 880 N. Since control
of the penetration depth by single beam laser welding was
not successful, the dual beam laser welding with the
forward beam for preheating the welding region was
attempted as the next step. The results reveals that
application of dual beam laser welding could well control
the penetration depth and the failure load was increased
with increasing the welding width. The maximum failure
load obtained was 1774 N, which was about 62 percent of
the failure load of A5052-O. Thus, laser welding of
AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint with dual laser beam for
controlling penetration depth of molten zone and with Al-
12Si filler wire for suppressing intermetallic compound
layer found to be an effective technique for joining of
AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint.
Keywords: : Dissimilar metals welding, Magnesium
alloy, Aluminum alloy, Laser welding, Dual beam laser
welding
1. Introduction
Due to increasing demand of application of lightweight
metals in automotive industry for saving energy, joining
between different kinds of lightweight metals have been
needed, specifically between magnesium and aluminum.
For joining between magnesium and aluminum, three
joining techniques, including bolting, self-piercing
riveting and clinching, have been used commercially.
Since they are costly, and encounter some service
problems, the automotive manufacturers have still looked
for novel welding techniques for magnesium and
aluminum dissimilar joining. Solid state welding, such as
friction welding, diffusion bonding and friction stir
welding have been studied [1-4]. Friction stir welding is
appeared to be a good technique for joining between
magnesium and aluminum. However, it could not be
applied to the complicated weld shapes. The laser
welding, which has been increasingly applied in
automotive industry [5-6], is another feasible welding
technique in joining dissimilar metals between aluminum
and magnesium [7]. The authors have proposed the
concept of modification of intermetallic compound layer
by using Al-12Si filler wire in joining AZ31/A5052 [8].
This technique was successful to improve joining
strength. The joining strength could be improved up to 60
percent of failure load for the A5052 base metal. Since
butt weld was used in the previous work, the area support
the force could not be enlarged more than the cross-
sectional area. Edge-lap welding has an advantage in
improving the failure load by increasing the force
supporting area [9-10]. However, in application of edge-
lap welding to dissimilar metal joining, the shallow
penetration depth of molten zone is needed to suppress the
intermetallic compound formation. Therefore, in this
study, laser welding of edge lap AZ31/A5052 joint by
controlling penetration depth and using of Al-12Si filler
wire for joining AZ31/A5052 was carried out in order to
investigate its effectiveness in joining AZ31/A5052.
2. Materials and General Experiment
Procedures
Magnesium alloy AZ31B and aluminum alloy A5052-O
thin plates with 1 mm thickness were used in this study.
Al-12Si wire with a diameter of 2 mm was used as a filler
metal, composition of which is shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Chemical Composition of Al-12Si
Before welding the surfaces and edges for welding were
polished with 1000 grids emery paper in order to remove
oxide layer and then degreased by using acetone. The
welding speeds used were in the range of 1-3 m/min. The
feed rates used were 30 and 35 m/s. Argon gas with a
flow rate of 40 liters per minute was used as a shield gas
to prevent the oxidation of the alloys at high temperature.
In this study, the tensile-shear tests were carried out to
find a suitable joining condition. Tensile-shear specimens
were machined from the joints, geometry of which is
shown in Fig. 1. Furthermore, cross-sectional observation
of the joints was conducted and the welding width and
penetration depth were measured. The welding width in
this study was defined as the width of molten zone along
the top surface of AZ31 sheet as shown in Fig. 2. While,
the penetration depth was defined as the length from the
top surface of AZ31 to the bottom of molten zone as
shown in Fig. 2
Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler
Wire
Since the full penetration weld was obtained, the fracture
path easily propagated inside the intermetallic compound
phase along the thickness of AZ31 sheet as shown in Fig.
7, which consequently resulted in low failure load
obtained. Also, it is possible to be referred that the
welding width was not significantly effect on improving
the failure load in case of single laser welding.
Fig. 1 Tensile-shear specimen

Fig. 2 Definition of welding width and penetration depth

3. Single beam laser welding

Fig. 3 Schematic view of single beam laser welding of edge-lap joint
In the first step of the present study, the single beam laser
welding of AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint with an Al-12Si
filler wire was carried out. Schematic view of single beam
laser welding of edge-lap joint is shown in Fig. 3. The
laser power and spot radii used were 3 kW and 0.62 mm,
respectively. Table 2 shows the suitability of welding
conditions. The circle mark in the table indicates the
suitable welding condition. From Table 2, the single beam
laser welding under welding speeds of 1 and 2 m/min for
both wire feed rates of 30 and 35 mm/s could join the
edge-lap joint. Figure 4 shows the overview of welding Fig. 4 Welding profile for the single beam laser welding
profile for the single beam laser welding. From the figure,
it was found that the front side of the edge-lap joint
showed the large and good shaped weld bead, while the
backside of the edge-lap joint revealed that the A5052
base metal was melted down to the bottom of AZ31 sheet.
The examples of cross-sectional observation of the joints
are shown in Fig. 5. From the figure, it could be confirmed
that full penetration of the A5052 base metal was occurred
for all the joints. Thus, the shallow penetration of molten
zone could not be realized in the single beam laser
welding. The intermetallic compound phase was formed Fig. 5 Cross-sectional observations for the single beam laser
at interface between molten zone and AZ31 base metals. welding
Moreover, a lot of porosity was formed in Al-12Si molten
zone due to the effect of hydrogen absorption by 4. Background for selecting the dual beam
aluminum at high temperature. However, the porosity did laser welding
not significantly affect the failure load.
Since it is difficult to control the penetration depth of
Table 2 Weldable conditions molten zone by the single beam laser welding another idea
for laser welding is required. The dual beam laser welding
is known to have an advantage to preheat the welding
region before welding [11]. It is also known that when one
side of joining metals is melted by controlling heat input,
the liquid metal could braze on the solid metal [12]. Al-
12Si filler wire molten metal would improve the
wettability to the solid AZ31. Therefore, the dual beam
The failure loads of joints are shown in Fig. 6. It was laser welding, where the forward beam is used for
found that failure load of joints was not too high. The preheating the welding region, is adopted and the results
maximum failure load obtained was just about 880 N. are explained in the following section.
Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler
Wire
Fig. 6 Failure loads of the edge-lap joints for the single and dual
beam laser welding (remarks: type I (fracture path along weld pool
boundary), type II (fracture path along weld pool boundary and melted
root), type III (fracture path along weld pool boundary and AZ31))
condition for the dual beam laser welding was slightly
wider compared to the single beam laser welding.
The overall view of welding profile for the dual beam
laser welding is shown in Fig. 10. It was found that the
front side of the edge-lap joint showed good-shaped bead
as same as those for the single beam laser welding. The
backside of edge-lap joint showed no melted-down of
A5052 base metal to the bottom of AZ31 plate. The cross-
sectional observation of the edge-lap joint also reveals
that the penetration depth of molten zone was shallow for
the dual beam laser welding as shown in Fig. 11.
However, cracks were found at backside of the edge-lap
joint in some welding conditions as shown in Fig. 11.
When the weld crack was formed, the Al-12Si molten
metal could penetrate to the crack and form the melted
root to the bottom of welding pool as shown in Fig. 11.

5. Dual beam laser welding

The schematic view of dual beam laser welding of
AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint with Al-12Si filler wire is
shown in Fig. 8. The dual laser beam used in this study
was produced by splitting 3 kW single laser beam using
the beam splitter, as schematically shown in Fig. 9. The
laser peak power ratio between a forward and follow
beam was 1:2. The spot radii for forward beam and
following beam were 0.75 mm and 0.45 mm, respectively.
The distance between the two beams was 1.6 mm.
Fig. 9 Schematic view of dual beam laser welding

Fig. 7 Examples of fracture path for the single beam laser welding
with a feed rate of 35 mm/s

Fig. 10 Welding profile for the dual beam laser welding.

Fig. 8 Schematic of laser splitter

The effectiveness of welding conditions for dual beam

laser welding of AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint is also shown
in Table 2. From the table, it was found that welding speed
of 1 and 2 m/min under a feed rate of 30 mm/s could
produce the joints, while under a feed rate of 35 mm/s,
welding speed of 1, 2 and 3 m/min could produce the Fig. 11 Cross-sectional observations for the dual beam laser
joints. It was found from Table 2 that the weldable welding
Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler
Wire
Figures 12 and 13 shows the relationships between
welding width and welding speed and between
penetration depth and welding speed, respectively. As
seen from these figures, the welding width and
penetration depth decreased with increasing welding
speed. The welding width and penetration depth also
increased with increasing the feed rate.
Fig. 12 Relationship between welding width and welding speed for
the dual beam laser welding
Fig. 13 Relationship between penetration depth and welding speed
for the dual beam laser welding
The failure loads of edge-lap joints for the dual beam laser
welding are shown in Fig. 6. As seen from Fig. 6, the
failure load for the dual beam laser welding increased
with decreasing welding speed, except for the welding
speed of 2 m/min under a feed rate of 35 mm/s. The failure
load was lower than that for the welding speed of 3 m/min
under a feed rate of 35 mm/s. The maximum failure load
obtained in the present study was 1773 N under the
welding condition of a welding speed of 1 m/min and a
feed rate of 30 mm/s.
After the tensile-shear test, 3 types of fracture path were
observed as shown in Fig. 14; 1) fracture path along the
weld pool boundary where the intermetallic compound
layer formed, 2) fracture path along the weld pool
boundary and melted root where intermetallic compound
layer formed, and 3) facture path along the weld pool
boundary and AZ31 base metals. The fracture path for
each welding condition was identified in Fig. 6.
Summarizing the above crack path observations, the
fracture path took place along the weld pool boundary. If
the tensile-shear strength of edge-lap joint is evaluated as
the value of failure load divided by the area for the
fracture path along the weld pool boundary, it was about
29 MPa, which was not significantly changed with
welding conditions. Therefore, if the welding width is
increased, the failure load would be increased. However,
if the welding width is increased, the penetration depth
would be also increased, which would make the unmelted
zone of AZ31 thinner. The thinner unmelted zone of AZ31
could not resist high load and easily brake compared to
the weld zone. Thus, the facture path changed to the types
3 when using lower welding speed. However, in some
welding conditions such as for the 2 m/min welding speed
under 35 mm/s of feed rate, the welding crack was
generated during welding and the intermetallic compound
was formed through the welding thickness. This kind of
joint was easily broken due to the brittle intermetallic
compound phase.
Fig. 14 Examples of fracture path for the dual beam laser welding
6. Conclusions
In this study, single and dual beam laser welding
of AZ31/A5052 edge-lap joint with Al-12Si filler wire
was studied. The main conclusions are summarized as
follows;
1. The dual beam laser welding for controlling
penetration depth of molten zone and the usage of Al-12Si
filler wire for suppressing the intermetallic compound
layer were useful techniques for AZ31/A5052 edge-lap
joining. While, the single beam laser welding was hard to
control the penetration depth.
2. Since the foreword beam of the dual beam
welding preheats the materials to be welded, application
of the dual beam could widen the weldable window
compared to the single beam welding.
3. The tensile-shear strength of intermetallic
compound layer was about 29 MPa. This value didn’t vary
within the present welding conditions. Therefore, if the
joint with large welding width and shallow penetration
depth is fabricated, the failure load of the joint would be
 Dual Beam Laser Welding of AZ31/A5052 Edge-lap Joint with Shallow Penetration Depth by using Al-12Si Filler
Wire
improved.
4. The maximum failure load obtained in the
present study was 1773 N under the welding speed of 1
m/min and the feed rate of 30 mm/s, which was about 62
percent of failure load for A5052.
7. References
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Hikaru, Mechanical Properties of Friction Welding
between AZ31 Magnesium Alloy and Aluminum, J.
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[2] Masato Fujimaki, Yukio Miyashita, Yoshiharu
Mutoh, Reaction at the Interface and the Strength of
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