Latest Advances and Future Prospects of Welding Technologies

Demands for properties of materials used in structures include many things such as strength, toughness, fatigue property, corrosion resistance and heat resistance, and these become to be higher level. On the other hand, demands for welding technologies become to be severe with these demands for properties, and these are wide variety such as high efficiencies, high qualities, many functions, labor saving and low cost. In this chapter, recent steels and titanium corresponded to these needs, and its welding technologies were described. At first, needs and development tendency in the fields of plates, sheets, pipes, stainless steels and titanium, and the examples of developed materials were described. Next, representative welding technologies in the fields of ship buildings, buildings, bridges, automobiles, home appliances, machines for building, tanks, pressure vessels, pipelines and power plants were described. Problems in the field of welding technologies are very wide, for example, application of newly developed steels in customers, stable operation of welding lines in steel works and welding procedures in the field of engineering. Further development is needed continuously in the field of welding.