Experimental Study on Laser Impact Welding of Dissimilar Metals

Laser impact welding (LIW) is a novel welding technique which uses laser induced shock waves to obtain the solid-state and metallurgical bonding between flyer and base plates, and can be applied in welding of dissimilar metal plates in micron level. In this paper, experimental study is conducted with titanium as the flyer plate and aluminum as the base plate under different laser energies and laser spot diameters. Besides, the microstructure and mechanical properties of the welding joints are also investigated. The wavy interface is observed by metallographic investigation which is similar to explosive welding and electromagnetic pulse welding. Moreover, the micro-hardness taken from the interface region shows an obvious improvement compared with the base metal. It is also found that laser shock welding results in fine grained structure of titanium on the weld interface. In conclusion, laser shock welding can not only improve the material microstructure of weld interface, but also avoid the heat affected zone and formation of intermetallic phase during dissimilar metal welding. Therefore, it is a promising welding technology in the field of MEMS.