Laser Welding of Magnesium Alloys: Issues and Remedies

Abstract

Automotive industry tends to use lightweight alloys to save on mass in order to have more economic and environment friendly automobiles. A variety of alloys have been used in automotive industry such as magnesium, aluminum, and galvanized steel. Magnesium is the lightest structural metal that can significantly help decrease the body structure weight. Laser welding is one of the main joining processes used in automotive industry due to its superior joint properties. In the current study, the main issue that was pore formation during the laser welding of magnesium alloy is investigated. First, the process was performed using different process parameters to study their effect on the weld quality. Then a variety of approaches were used to mitigate pores in the weld. The results showed that these approaches could effectively mitigate pore formation in the weld bead. In addition, the pore formation issue was nondestructively detected using real‐time methods such as spectrometer and high speed charge‐coupled device (CCD) camera. The results showed that there was a good correlation between pore for‐ mation and the real‐time‐monitoring detected data.