The weld quality improvement via laser cleaning pre-treatment for laser butt welding of the HSLA steel plates

Abstract

Laser cleaning technology for pre-weld and post-weld treatments is a promising market due to its high efficiency and consistency, easy operation, and eco-friendly features. The weld quality influence of laser cleaning pre-treatment for the succeeding laser welding of the widely used industrial HSLA steel plates has been investigated in this work. The experimental results show that the laser cleaning pre-treatment can effectively remove the rusting and grease from the workpiece surface, create a corrugated micro-groove texture which could increase the absorption rate of the laser beam energy, help avoid the occurrence of pores and cracks in the weld, and significantly increase the mechanical properties of laser butt welding joints (30% for the tensile strength, 200% for the elongation). These experimental results should be helpful for developing hybrid laser cleaning & welding technologies for the emerging high-performance weld applications in practices.