The Weldability and Mechanical Behavior of Medium Carbon Steel in CW Nd:YAG Laser Welding

This paper describes the weldability and mechanical behavior of JIS S45C medium carbon steel (corresponding to KS SM45C and SAE 1045) for machine structures in CW Nd:YAG laser welding. In general, medium carbon steels have a limited application to the industrial fields in spite of good mechanical characteristics. This is due to welding difficulty because of the high carbon contents and impurities in this material. Therefore, in this study the laser weldability of medium carbon steel with adjusted contents of S and P has been investigated in order to extend the application to medium carbon steels. Several experiments and numerical simulations have been conducted to determine the characteristics of mechanical behavior in CW Nd:YAC laser welds. The results of the simulations concur with the experiment results. From the result of this study, the application possibility of CW Nd:YAG laser welding to medium carbon steel has been confirmed. Also, the appropriateness of mechanical behavior simulation has been verified to analyze and predict the welding phenomena.