Basic Numerical Study on Gap Influence of Residual Stress and Distortion during High-Brightness Laser Butt Welding

High-brightness laser such as fiber laser or disk laser is expected to minimize the total heat input energy in welding due to its high beam quality, and the welding residual stress and distortion also seem to be reduced as a result. However, the diameter of high-brightness laser beam is less than 0.6 mm and it is difficult to set the beam position to contact face between two parts because in general there would be a gap due to quality of parts. In this study, in order to reveal the effect of gap on the residual stress and the welding distortion during fiber laser welding, the butt welding of two plates were examined through the thermal elastic-plastic analysis with a new gap element. From the result of thermal analyses, it was found that the homogeneous ellipsoid body could be applicable to model the shape of heat source for the fiber laser and the gap width would not influence the penetration shape when the gap width was changed from 0.1 to 0.25 mm. In addition, the elastic-plastic analyses indicated that the transverse shrinkage slightly increased with increasing the gap width, while this shrinkage without gap was much smaller than that with gap. Also, it was revealed that the welding speed largely affects both the welding residual stress and distortion. Moreover, it was found that the residual stress was almost independent of the jig position, while the position of fixtures slightly affected the transverse shrinkage