NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE TEMPERATURE FIELD FOR Fe3Al LASER WELDING

The main objective of this paper was focused on a numerical study related to a proper evaluation of the temperature field during the laser-welding process. The investigated material used for the experiments was Fe3Al, given its properties and promising application potential. The original experiment was based on a 3D model of a butt weld. However, to reduce the computational complexity, a planar variant of the heat-transfer equation with suitable choices of surface and volumetric heat sources, given by modified Gaussian pulses, is used to model the temperature distribution in the fixed cross cut during the laser welding. Subsequently, the numerical scheme based on the discontinuous Galerkin method was employed to evaluate the temperature field more properly and to identify the main characteristics of the molten zone. Finally, the numerical study was performed for various combinations of the welding parameters, such as laser-beam power and welding speed. The obtained results were in good agreement with the expected behavior, and thus illustrate the optimization potential of the proposed numerical scheme in the similar issues of a laser-welding processes.