Experimental and numerical investigation of temperature distribution and melt pool geometry during pulsed laser welding of Ti6Al4V alloy

This paper reports on a numerical and experimental investigation of laser welding of titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) for modeling the temperature distribution to predict the heat affected zone (HAZ), depth and width of the molten pool. This is a transient three-dimensional problem in which, because of simplicity, the weld pool surface is considered flat. The complex physical phenomenon causing the formation of keyhole has not been considered. The temperature histories of welding process were studied. It was observed that the finite volume thermal model was in good agreement with the experimental data. Also, we predicted the temperature as a function of distance at different laser welding speeds and saw that at each welding speed, the temperature profile was decreased sharply in points close to the laser beam center, and then decreased slightly in the far region from the laser beam center. The model prediction error was found to be in the 2-17% range with most numerical values falling within 7% of the experimental values.