THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGING OF GAS PORES IN FUSION WELDED Al ALLOYS BY SYNCHROTRON RADIATION X-RAY MICROTOMOGRAPHY
YU Cheng1, WU Shengchuan1,3(), HU Yanan1, ZHANG Weihua1, FU Yanan2
1 State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031 2 Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201204 3 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble F-38043, France
Cite this article:
YU Cheng, WU Shengchuan, HU Yanan, ZHANG Weihua, FU Yanan. THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGING OF GAS PORES IN FUSION WELDED Al ALLOYS BY SYNCHROTRON RADIATION X-RAY MICROTOMOGRAPHY. Acta Metall Sin, 2015, 51(2): 159-168.
Large numbers of complicatedly distributed gas pores are inevitably formed during the hybrid fusion welding of aluminum alloys because of the sharp reduction of supersaturated hydrogen. However, there is no consistent and explicit view on how these gas pores are distributed and influence the static and fatigue property of welded aluminum joints. In this work, pores in hybrid welded 7020-T651 were characterized by high-resolution synchrotron radiation X-ray computed microtomography. The volume, sphericity, flatness and distance of pores centroid to free surface of samples were statistically measured and fitted. From the 3D characterization, micropores inside hybrid welds are mainly metallurgical pores, which are symmetrically distributed about the seam centerline, giving a mean sphericity larger than 0.65. Moreover, pores inside upper welds appear to be larger in effective diameter and denser in heat affected zone and lower welds. Besides, there are numerous pores with diameter less than 20 μm, with a frequency of 65% and 85% in the upper and lower weld, respectively. It seems that hot cracks with complicated morphology form in the lower weld due to shrinkage and rapid solidification of the molten pool. Furthermore, it is found that the connections of a few pore-pore and pore-hot-crack together with the hot cracks result in the smaller sphericity of gas pores in the lower welds. Finally it can be indicated that the higher welding speed gives rise to the smaller pore volume fraction, but has little influence on the distribution of pore position and sphericity。
Fund: Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51005068), Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities (No.2682013CX030) and Fundamental Joint Research Fund for the High Speed Railway of China (No.U1234208)
Fig.1 Schematic of synchrotron radiation X-ray imaging
Fig.2 3D rendering of micro pores (a, c, e, g) and the area fraction in slices along the longitudinal axis (b, d, f, h) inside hybrid weld samples T1 (a, b), B1 (c, d), T2 (e, f) and B2 (g, h)
Table 2 Statistical analysis of gas pores for all samples
Fig.5 Distributions of effective diameter of pores and their lognormal curves fitting inside hybrid weld samples T1 (a), B1 (b), T2 (c) and B2 (d) (y0, xc, A—scale parameters; w—shape parameter; R2—goodness of fit)
Fig.6 Distributions of sphericity of pores and their modified lognormal curves fitting inside hybrid weld samples T1 (a), B1 (b), T2 (c) and B2 (d) (x0—scale parameter)
Fig.7 Distance to free surface of pores and their Voigt profile functions fitting inside hybrid weld samples T1 (a), B1 (b), T2 (c) and B2 (d) (n—the number of peaks; Ai—area of the ith peak; WLi, WGi—full width at half maximum of the ith peak for Lorentz and Gauss composition, respectively; xci—central position of the ith peak; yb—base line position)
Fig.8 Relationships between sphericity and effective diameter (a), sphericity and the distance to free surface (b) and the distance to free surface and effective diameter (c)
Fig.9 Gas micro pores and hot cracks within hybrid welds
(a) individual pore
(b) linked pores
(c, d) linked thermal cracks
Fig.10 Scatter of sphericity and flatness
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