The hourglass-like heat source model and its application for laser beam welding of 6 mm thickness 1060 steel

An hourglass-like heat source model is developed to simulate the geometry of weld beads of laser beam welding. The welding experiments with different welding parameters were carried out to find whether the welds are full-penetrated or not. The laser powers ranged between 1.0 and 5.0 kW with steps of 1.0 kW. Five levels of the welding speed were used: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 m/min. The numerical analysis based on finite element method was used to predict the shape of weld pools during welding. To give a better representation of weld bead, an hourglass-like heat source model is developed to describe the unique shape of 1060 steel weld bead for laser beam welding without filler metal instead of the commonly used conical heat source. Comparing the predicted fusion profile with the experimental cross section of weld, it is found that hourglass-like heat source model is more consistent with the experimental results than the conical heat source for 1060 steel. In addition, the best heat source parameters are obtained by an error analysis. Compared to the experimental results, the simulated results for the welds using Power = 4000 W and Speed = 2.0 m/s and 5000 W and 2.0 m/s match the experimental results well.