Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Ti5553 Butt Welds Performed by LBW under Conduction Regime

Ti-5Al-5V-5Mo-3Cr (Ti5553) is a metastable β titanium alloy with a high potential use in the aeronautic industry due to its high strength, excellent hardenability, fracture toughness and high fatigue resistance. However, recent research shows this alloy has a limited weldability. Different welding technologies have been applied in the literature to weld this alloy, such as electron beam welding (EBW), gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) or laser beam welding (LBW) under keyhole regime. Thus, in tensile tests, joints normally break at the weld zones, the strength of the welds being always lower than that of the base metal. In the present work, a novel approach, based on the application of LBW under conduction regime (with a High-Power Diode Laser, HPDL), has been employed for the first time to weld this alloy. Microstructure, microhardness and strength of obtained welds were analyzed and reported in this paper. LBW under conduction regime (LBW-CR) leads to welds with slightly higher values of Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) than those previously obtained with other joining processes, probably due to the higher hardness of the fusion zone and to lower porosity of the weld