Laser spot welding of laser textured steel to aluminium

Laser welding of dissimilar metals (steel and aluminium) was investigated with the aim to increase the maximum tensile shear load of the Fe-Al joints. The increase was achieved by texturing the surface of steel prior to the laser spot welding process which was performed in a lap-joint configuration with the steel positioned on top of the aluminium and with a texture faced down to the aluminium surface. This configuration enabled an increase of the bonding area of the joints, because the molten aluminium filled in the gaps of the texture, without the need of increasing the process energy which typically leads to the growth of the intermetallic compounds. Different textures (containing hexagonally arranged craters, parallel lines, grid and spiral patterns) were tested with different laser welding parameters. The Fe-Al joints obtained with the textured steel were found to have up to 25% higher maximum tensile-shear load than the joints obtained with the untextured steel

Nanosecond laser texturing for high friction applications

AbstractA nanosecond pulsed Nd:YAG fibre laser with wavelength of 1064nm was used to texture several different steels, including grade 304 stainless steel, grade 316 stainless steel, Cr–Mo–Al ‘nitriding’ steel and low alloy carbon steel, in order to generate surfaces with a high static friction coefficient. Such surfaces have applications, for example, in large engines to reduce the tightening forces required for a joint or to secure precision fittings easily. For the generation of high friction textures, a hexagonal arrangement of laser pulses was used with various pulse overlaps and pulse energies. Friction testing of the samples suggests that the pulse energy should be high (around 0.8mJ) and the laser pulse overlap should be higher than 50% in order to achieve a static friction coefficient of more than 0.5. It was also noted that laser processing increases the surface hardness of samples which appears to correlate with the increase in friction. Energy-Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) measurements indicate that this hardness is caused by the formation of hard metal-oxides at the material surface