Composition of A356
1. Introduction
As aluminum matrix composites are generally low-cost and exhibit higher specific strength, high wearability, and good design performance property and functionality. They are widely applied in aerospace-flight, aviation structure, and automobile and in the heat resistant-wearable parts of engine [1-4]. Hence, a great deal of contemporary research effort is focusing upon their development and applications, typically on the discontinuously reinforced aluminum matrix composites like matrix with particle, short fiber, whisker and so forth. Additionally, a great deal of attention has also been drawn into the investigation of their secondary processing technologies like machining, joining and plastic forging. Welding is an important process for joining these materials. There has extensive effort to be devoted to developing appropriate process for joining the similar or dissimilar composites in literatures [2-4]. These processes can be mainly categorized as: (i) fusion welding like arc welding, shielding gas welding, laser welding and electron beam welding,
Aiming at developing or improving the conventional welding technique, this paper studies the technique of welding the stir-cast aluminum matrix composite SiCp/A356 by Nd:YAG laser welding with pure titanium as filler. This study has been specifically concerned on the
2. Experimental material and process
2.1. Experimental material
Stir-cast SiCp/A356 aluminum matrix composite, reinforced with 20 % volume fraction SiC particle of 12 μm mean size, was used as the welding specimens. The tensile strength of such specimens was 240 MPa and their solid-liquid phase transformation temperature was in the range of 562.6~578.3 ˚C. Figure 1 showed their corresponding microstructure while Table 1 tabulated the chemical composition of the A356 matrix alloy. Pure titanium was used as the filler metal.
Composition (Wt %) | |||
Si | Mg | Ti | Al |
6.5~7.5 | 0.3~0.5 | 0.08~0.2 | Bal. |
2.2. Experimental process
The stir-cast aluminum matrix composite specimens were individually wire-cut to the size of 3 mm × 10 mm × 35 mm (Fig. 2). The quench-hardened layer induced by wire-cut and the oxide on the surfaces of specimens were polished away by 400 # emery cloth. The pure titanium filler was then machined to depth 3 mm × width 10 mm × thickness of 0.15 mm, 0.3 mm, 0.45 mm, 0.5 mm, 0.6 mm and 0.75 mm, respectively The specimens were then mounted into a clamping devise on the platform of a GSI Lumonics Model JK702H Nd:YAG TEM00 mode laser system, and their welding surfaces were properly cleaned by acetone and pure ethyl alcohol so as to remove any possible contaminant. The prepared pure titanium filler was also thoroughly cleaned and carefully sandwiched between the two composite specimens in the clamp. Thereafter, specimens were welded immediately by the Nd:YAG laser with wavelength of 1.06
Tensile strength of the joint was performed by a MTS Alliance RT/30 electron-mechanical material testing machine with a straining velocity of 0.5mm/min.The cross-section of welded joints was wire-cut for optical microscope investigation, and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) analyses. SEM was used to analyze in detail the microstructure at the weld joints and the fractured tensile test-pieces of the joints. Optical microscope was used for observing the structure of a large area. TEM and Electron Diffusion X-ray analysis (EDX) were used to analyze the interface between the newly-formed phases and aluminum matrix, the distribution of chemical elements and spectra at the joints. The Nd:YAG laser with the similar setting conditions and feedrate was also used to weld the aluminum matrix composite specimens without any filler.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Microstructures and properties of welded joints
The microstructure of the
Thickness of Ti filler (mm) | 0.00 | 0.15 | 0.3 | 0.45 | 0.60 | 0.75 |
Mean strength (MPa) | 76-91 | 126-135 | 168-180 | 143-160 | 107-113 | 79-96 |
Element | Ti | Si | Al |
Wt (%) | 81.84 | 4.42 | Bal. |
Figure 6 illustrates the macro-structure of welded joint with Ti filler. Basically, the weld consisted of three main areas, namely: the
3.2. Element distribution in the transition area
Figure 9 illustrates the element distribution of the area B in the weld as shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7b. It showed the newly-formed
According to the free energy for forming the SiC, TiC and Al4C3 carbides as elaborated in Fig. 10 of literatures [5, 6, 7], the free energy required to form TiC was much lower than that for Al4C3 when the reaction temperature was above 800 ºC. The affinity between Ti and C in the Nd:YAG laser welding was therefore greater than that of Al and C. The chemical reaction between Ti and SiC in the welding pool would subsequently take precedence over the reaction between Al and SiC and thus resulted in restraining the formation of the pernicious acicular Al4C3.
3.3. Influence of Ti filler thickness
The microstructures of
3.4. TEM of the interface between in situ reinforcement particle TiC and matrix
The interface between
4. Microstructure evolution during the welding
4.1. Temperature field of laser welding
The heat is assumed to be released instantaneously at time
where
When temperature distribution is quasi-steady state:
During the Nd:YAG laser welding,
Where
Eq. (2) can be rewritten as:
Define
then Eq. (6) can be written as
4.2. Simulation model
4.2.1. Equations for temperature distribution
Using energy balance, a differential equation can be obtained for the steady temperature distribution in a homogeneous isotopic medium, that is
Where the boundary conditions are
For
After Eq. 9 is discrete for the element, and according to
where
4.2.2. Hypothesis and mesh
Based on the situations during the laser welding and mainly focused on the temperature distribution, it is supposed that the laser resource is considered as a Gaussian distribution. Also, on the basis of specimen size wire-cut, the calculating size is set as 25 mm (
4.2.3. Temperature distribution
The simulated results are shown in Fig. 18 to Fig. 23. It shows that the temperature without Ti filler is same as the traditional laser welding. Simultaneously, due to the heat input into the substrates directly, without the additional heat resource for melting Ti filler, the peak of temperature (heat input) is relatively higher to form the weld. As a result, increasing the heat input into the substrate will decrease the tensile strength of the welded joint and wide the heat affected zone (HAZ) resulted in lower properties in the succedent practical applications (Table 2 and Fig. 19). Furthermore, a large amount of coarser acicular Al4C3 distributed in the fracture surface as shown in Fig. 19, which decreased the tensile strength of the welded joints seriously.
Figure 20 shows the temperature field of laser welding SiCp/A356 with Ti filler. Considering the Ti melting and in situ reaction in the welding pool as an endothermic reaction, the welding temperature decreases and will be lower than that of laser welding directly (cf. Figs. 18 and 20), and its temperature field is distributed more smoothly with in situ reaction than that of laser welding without Ti filler as shown in Fig. 21. Also, the width of HAZ is decreased to some extent (Fig. 21b). Furthermore, it shows that according to the real effect of laser beam diameter, the thickness of Ti filler is about 0.3 mm will be optimal for in situ welding which conformed to the experimental results as shown in Table 2.
In addition, the effect of Ti on the temperature distribution on the central line is shown in Fig. 22. It illustrates that the peak of the temperature is changed distinctly. Because of the sandwiched Ti between the substrates and in situ endothermic reaction, the temperature of substrate ahead of laser resource is lower than that of without Ti filler. Moreover, the temperature at the succedent distance is increased or accumulated a little bit due to the different conductive coefficient between Ti and substrate. On the other side, its corresponding trend of the temperature behind the laser resource (resolidification) is same as that of without Ti filler except for a peak appearance induced by more serious exothermic potential during the crystallization.
Figure 23 shows the temperature distribution when Ti filler is thick. The peak of temperature is decreased obviously and leads to the welding failure.
Figure 24 shows the microstructure of laser welded joint with thick Ti filler and its corresponding energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) results. It can be observed that a large number of columnar Ti crystallization is distributed in the weld. From Figs. 23 and 24, it elucidates that with the increase of Ti thickness, the heat input into the substrate is decreased and most of energy is used for melting Ti led to the insufficient in situ reaction and stirring in the welding pool resulted in lower properties of welded joints.
Furthermore, in order to verify the temperature field, noncontact thermometer (model AZ9881) was used to measure the spot temperature on-line. The measured temperature results are shown in Fig. 25. It shows that the measured results agree well with the simulated results.
4.3. Microstructure evolution simulation
According to the temperature calculation, the simulation of the evolution of the microstructure based on thermodynamic equilibria, diffusion [5, 6, 7] was shown in Fig. 26. It showed that during the welding pool solidification, the in situ reinforcement particles TiC would be formed around the initial reinforcement SiC particles. With the increase of cooling time, the initial reinforcement SiC particles would be replaced by the newly-formed in situ reinforcement particles TiC. It was well matched with the results shown in Figs. 7 and 9.
5. Conclusions
The use of titanium as a filler metal in Nd:YAG laser welding of SiCp/A356 provided beneficial in situ reinforcement effect. The effect of in situ reinforcement of the Ti filler allowed the newly-formed reinforcement TiC particles to distribute uniformly in the weld that subsequently resulted in successfully welding the SiCp/A356 composite. Moreover, the typical pernicious interfacial reaction microstructure such as Al4C3 was effectively restrained from the interface between aluminum matrix and reinforcement particles in the Nd:YAG laser welding of SiCp/A356 with Ti filler. Furthermore, according to the temperature calculation, the evolution of the microstructure was simulated based on thermodynamic equilibria, diffusion. Results were well matched with the corresponding experiments.
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