Quality Assessment of Laser Welding Dual Phase Steels

Since non-conforming parts create waste for industry, generating undesirable costs, it is necessary to set up quality plans that not only guarantee product conformity but also cut the root causes of welding defects by developing the concept of quality at origin. Due to their increasing use in automotive industry, dual phase (DP) steels have been the chosen material for this study. A quality plan for welding DP steel components by laser was developed. This plan is divided into three parts: pre-welding, during and post-welding. A quality assessment regarding mechanical properties, such as hardness, microstructure and tensile strength, was also performed. It was revealed that DP steel does not present considerable weldability problems, except for the usual softening of the heat affected zone (HAZ) and the growth of martensite in the fusion zone (FZ), and the best analysis techniques to avoid failures in these steels are finite element method (FEM), visual techniques during welding procedure and digital image correlation (DIC) for post-weld analysis.