Influence of shielding gas and laser irradiation conditions on porosity formation in CO2 laser welding of aluminium alloy

Abstract

Summary The influence of the shielding gas and laser irradiation conditions on porosity formation in CO2 laser welding of aluminium alloy were investigated. Bead-on-plate welding tests were performed on 7 mm thick Al-Mg alloy (A5182) plates. The weld beads were inspected by X-ray and the number of pores was counted as a function of the pore diameter. We found that the number of pores was minimised when the dew point of the shielding gas was kept at as low as −50°C at the welding nozzle tip. At a dew point of −50°C the number of pores decreased when the flow rate of the shielding gas (Ar) was reduced and the nozzle diameter was increased, presumably because of less air mixing in the welding region. We also found that porosity formation was reduced when He/Ar mixtures were used as the shielding gas instead of pure Ar or He shielding gas. But porosity also depended on the defocused distance of the laser beam at a given laser power. With Ar shielding gas, the number of pores increased when the beam was focused above the specimen surface/while with He shielding gas it increased when the beam was focused in the weld pool. These dependencies may be attributed to the unstable keyhole formation due to laser absorption through the intense plasma formed on the specimen surface and due to the strong boiling of the molten metal respectively. The results indicate that both the hydrogen and the unstable keyhole behaviour cause porosity formation in laser welding of aluminium alloys. Under the optimised conditions, however, the number of pores was significantly reduced.