Investigation of the capability of hybrid Nd:YAG - TIG welding against Nd:YAG laser welding process for aluminum foam sandwich panels

Hybrid laser-arc welding is a new welding process which received particular attention in various industries because of its technological and economic advantages. This process combines a laser beam and an electric arc to incorporate the advantages of both laser and arc welding processes. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the performance and ability of hybrid Nd:YAG laser-TIG welding compared to lone laser welding process for welding of aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) panels of AA6082. For this aim, a set of experiments for both laser and hybrid laser-TIG welding were done to investigate the effects of welding parameters including laser power, arc current and welding speed on weld dimensions. Then, appropriate welding parameters for the laser and hybrid laser-TIG welding of AFS panels were calculated by statistical analysis. The results show that laser power threshold for creating the keyhole was less in hybrid laser-TIG welding than lone laser welding. Moreover, increasing the laser power and decreasing the welding speed result in increasing both the weld depth and width. But, with increasing the arc current, the weld depth remains almost unchanged and only the weld width increases. Comparing the laser and hybrid laser-TIG results show that adding a 100 A arc to a 2000 W laser source can increase the welding speed from 2 to 3 m/min which prove the high ability and efficiency of hybrid laser-TIG welding process.