In-process monitoring and feedback control for stable production of full-penetration weld in continuous wave fibre laser welding

Laser micro-welding has been applied for device sealing in electronics and automobile industries. Welding of corners in goods and products is a problem owing to easier formation of a weld with burn-through, shallow penetration or a non-bonded part when a drastic change in the welding speed or laser power occurs. This research was therefore undertaken with the objective of obtaining a fundamental knowledge of in-process monitoring and feedback control for the stable production of a full-penetration weld with a constant bead width on the bottom surface irrespective of the changes in the laser power and the welding speed. Variation in weld penetration geometry was investigated by rapid deceleration and acceleration in the welding speed during lap welding of pure titanium thin sheets with a continuous wave (CW) single-mode fibre laser beam. The rapid deceleration in the welding speed led to a considerable change in the full-penetration weld geometry or a partially penetrated weld (if the power was accordingly reduced), resulting in the difficulty in the stable production of a full-penetration weld bead. The heat radiation intensity measured from the laser-irradiated area was useful as an in-process monitoring signal for detecting the molten pool size on the laser-irradiated surface. However, the utilization of monitoring of heat radiation was difficult for predicting the weld bead width on the bottom surface due to the formation of partial penetration or the change in the penetration shape. The laser power was controlled at a 4 ms interval according to the heat radiation signal in order to adjust the weld bead width on the laser-irradiated surface to the target weld penetration geometry affected by thermal storage. Consequently, the feedback-controlled laser power produced a stable full-penetration weld with the designed bead width on the bottom surface irrespective of the rapid deceleration of the welding speed and the corresponding decrease in laser power. Furthermore, the developed feedback control algorithm was effective in rapid acceleration of the welding speed. From these results, it was confirmed that the consideration of the feedback control algorithm including a thermophysical property such as thermal storage was essential for the suppression of the effect due to rapid deceleration and acceleration of the welding speed and the laser power in lap seam micro-welding with a CW fibre laser.