Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830

DOI 10.1007/s00170-016-8929-1

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Understanding and elimination of process defects in narrow gap

multi-pass fiber laser welding of ferritic steel sheets of 30 mm
thickness
Jiecai Feng 1 & Wei Guo 1 & Neil Irvine 1 & Lin Li 1

Received: 18 December 2015 / Accepted: 12 May 2016 / Published online: 24 May 2016
# The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract Narrow gap (or groove) laser welding involves 1 Introduction

multiple layer additive manufacture for the joining of
thick-section metallic components. Typical defects in- Pressurized water reactor (PWR) pressure vessels are of
clude porosity, cracking, lack of fusion to sidewalls, a cylindrical shell design, 3.3∼4.6 m in diameter and
and between layers, and component distortion including 12∼14 m in height, with a through-wall thickness of
the closure of the groove. This study aimed to under- about 230 mm [1]. The primary welding technology
stand the defect formation mechanisms and factors af- for the nuclear pressure vessel manufacture is multi-
fecting them, and to develop appropriate welding proce- pass submerged arc welding (SAW) [2, 3]. However,
dures and parameters for joining ferritic steel sheets of compared with the electron beam welding (EBW) and
30 mm in thickness. High-quality welded joints in 30- laser beam welding (LBW), SAW generally employs a
mm-thick Grade 43 ferritic steel sheets have been high heat input, resulting in large distortions and resid-
achieved by multi-pass defocused laser beam welding ual stresses after welding. Additionally, a relatively wide
with filler wire addition. The microstructure and the V-shape groove is commonly used in SAW, which
microhardness of the multi-pass welded joint were means that large number of weld passes and large
found to be affected by the tempering of the subsequent amount of filler material are required. For instance, a
multi-pass welding layers. Post-weld heat treatment on heat input of 1.8 kJ/mm and a ∼50-mm wide groove
the welded joints were required since, although the are required for welding SA533 and SA508 steel plates
strength of the welded joints were higher than that of of 140 mm thickness using multi-pass SAW [3]. Using
base metal, the ductility was much lower than that of EBW for joining thick-section pressure vessels and
base metal. pipes, a 160-mm-thick SA508 steel component has been
welded using a reduced pressure electron beam single-
pass welding process [4]. LBW is more flexible as a
Keywords Narrow gap . Multi-pass . Laser welding . laser beam can be transmitted by optical fibers, which
Thick-section . Ferritic steel makes laser welding amenable to the manufacture of
complex components [5–9]. Jones et al. [10] demon-
strated that with a groove width of only 6 mm, excel-
lent quality welds in a 60-mm thick-walled stainless
steel tube were produced by narrow gap multi-pass laser
welding with filler wire addition. Compared with arc
* Jiecai Feng welding, the heat input decreased from 2.5 to 1.1 kJ/
[email protected]; [email protected] mm and the number of welding passes also was reduced
from 30 to 13. Zhang et al. [11] reported that with 8
1
Laser Processing Research Centre, School of Mechanical, Aerospace
passes, butt joining of 50-mm-thick stainless steel plates
and Civil Engineering, The University of Manchester, could be achieved by multi-pass narrow gap laser
Manchester M13 9PL, UK w e l d i n g w i t h f i l l e r w i r e a d d i t i o n . R e c e n t l y,

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1822 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830

Table 1 Chemical composition of the Grade 43 ferritic steel and filler

wire (wt.%)

C Si Mn P S Cr Ni Mo Cu

Steel 0.14 0.04 0.85 0.016 0.01 0.014 0.011 0.001 0.008
Wire 0.10 0.20 1.14 0.006 0.005 0.03 0.88 0.25 0.075

Elmesalamy et al. [12] reported that compared with arc

welding, the number of weld passes for narrow gap
Fig. 2 Schematic representation of narrow gap multi-pass laser welding
laser welding with filler wire addition decreased from process with filler wire addition
43 to 20, when welding 20-mm-thick AISI grade
316 L stainless steel plates. It is generally accepted that Ar gas with an 8 l/min flow rate was used as the
compared with SAW, the EBW and LBW techniques shielding gas. A butt joint configuration with a 4 to
offer higher welding speeds, lower levels of residual 5 mm width square groove was prepared as shown in
stress and distortion, while consuming less filler materi- Fig. 1. A schematic representation of the narrow gap
al [13–17]. multi-pass laser welding process with filler wire addi-
Most previous investigations in laser narrow gap welding tion is shown in Fig. 2, where D is the distance be-
were focused on the thick-section stainless steels. Little atten- tween the edge of the laser spot to the tip of the wire,
tion has been devoted to the ferritic steels. Compared with and is defined as the laser-wire overlapping. The
stainless steels, ferritic steels have higher specific heat, higher shielding gas was delivered with a 3-mm diameter tube
coefficient of thermal conductivity (∼3 times of that of stain- inside the weld groove of the narrow gap multi-pass
less steel), which means that narrow gap laser welding for laser welding process with filler wire addition in the
ferritic steels has a higher risk of leading to the lack of sidewall first method (Fig. 3), while in the second method, the
fusion than for stainless steels. In this paper, we report narrow shielding gas was delivered by a 15-mm-diameter tube
gap multi-pass laser welding with filler wire addition of a 30- on the top of the weld groove (Fig. 4). The specimen
mm-thick Grade 43 ferritic steel. The research focus was surfaces were cleaned with acetone before welding to
placed on the understanding of defect formation. The welding eliminate surface contamination.
procedures were optimized to eliminate defects such as crack- The welding system consisted of an IPG (YLS-
ing, lack of fusion and porosity. Additionally, the microstruc- 16000) continuous wave (CW) solid-state ytterbium fi-
tures and mechanical properties evolution of the multi-pass ber laser system with a maximum power of 16 kW and
welded joint were analyzed in detail. an Arc Welding Products (F4) wire feeder. This was
mounted on a six-axis KUKA welding robot. The beam
parameter product of the laser was 10 mm·mrad and the
2 Experimental procedure diameter of the beam delivery fiber was 300 μm. The
collimation length was 150 mm and the focal length for
The materials used in the study were Grade 43 ferritic steel the focusing lens was 400 mm. The diameter of the
with dimensions of 300 mm (length) × 135 mm
(width) × 30 mm (thickness) and a filler wire with a diameter
of 1.2 mm. Their chemical compositions are listed in Table 1.

Fig. 3 Schematic representation of shielding gas method with a small

Fig. 1 Schematic representation of groove shape (units in mm) diameter tube

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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830 1823

velocity at 20 °C. The depth and the width of the notch

are 10 mm and 0.5 mm, respectively. In addition, as
shown in Fig. 5b, longitudinal tensile specimens were
specially designed for the tensile tests at 20 °C. The
longitudinal tensile specimens were cut into dimensions
of 50 mm × 8 mm × 1.5 mm (Fig. 5d), and the tensile
tests were carried out on an Instron-5500R tensile ma-
chine with 0.5 mm/min crossbeam velocity at 20 °C. It
should be emphasized that the longitudinal tensile spec-
imens consisted of the weld zone (i.e. primarily the
filler wire) only. The base metal specimens with the
same dimensions were also tested for comparison.
Fig. 4 Schematic representation of shielding gas method with a large
diameter tube

laser spot was 6 mm on the target surface. The various 3 Results and discussion
laser heat input investigated ranged from 0.9 to 1.2 kJ/
mm. The laser-wire over lapping was varied from 1 to 3.1 Factors affecting the welding quality
5 mm. The wire feed rate was varied from 4 to 6 m/
min. The various welding velocities ranged from 0.3 to 3.1.1 Effect of laser heat input on crack formation
0.5 m/min.
The welded specimen cross-sections were polished and The cross-sectional weld bead profiles for welded joints
etched using a solution of a mixture of 5 ml nitric acid and with different laser heat input are shown in Fig. 6. It
95 ml ethanol. Microscopic examination was carried out using can be seen that there were 2.3 mm deep longitudinal
a KEYENCE VHX-500 F optical microscope and a Hitachi surface cracks in the welded joint when the laser heat
S3000N model scanning electron microscope (SEM). input was 0.9 kJ/mm (Fig. 6a). However, when the heat
Microhardness of the welded joint was measured using an input increased to 1.05 kJ/mm, the length of the longi-
automatic Vickers microhardness machine with a load of tudinal surface cracks decreased to 0.8 mm. A welded
3 kg and a dwell period of 10 s. joint without cracks was achieved when the laser heat
Full-size transverse tensile specimens with and with- input reached 1.2 kJ/mm (Fig. 6b). This is because that
out notch were machined from the welded joint laser welding is associated with relatively high cooling
(Fig. 5a, c), for tensile strength testing, on a WE- rates, which results in increased risks for cracking when
1000B tensile machine with 1 mm/min crossbeam compared with arc welding techniques. With a higher

Fig. 5 Schematic of sampling location: a transverse tensile specimens, b longitudinal tensile specimens, dimensions of: c transverse tensile specimen
and d longitudinal tensile specimen

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1824 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830

Fig. 6 Effect of the laser heat input on multi-pass laser welding with filler
wire addition: a 0.9 kJ/mm, b 1.05 kJ/mm, and c 1.2 kJ/mm Fig. 8 Effect of the shielding gas method on multi-pass laser welding
with filler wire addition: a 5 mm diameter tube inside groove and b
laser heat input the cooling rate of the weld pool could 15 mm diameter tube on the top of the groove
be reduced resulting in fewer risks for cracking.
was 3 mm, the molten metal did not contact with the weld
pool and it could not be transferred to the weld pool directly,
3.1.2 Effect of laser-wire overlapping on side wall fusion while it dropped to the weld pool, which would cause lack of
and spatter sidewall fusion. When the overlapping increased to 5 mm,
spatter was found on the sidewall of the groove by the molten
Figure 7 shows the cross sectional weld bead profiles for metal as the molten metal on the tip of the wire was far away
welded joints with different laser-wire overlapping. It can be from the weld pool, resulting in less deposited metal on the
seen that when the overlapping was 1 mm, the welded joint welded joint.
without lack of sidewall fusion and spatters was obtained.
However, when the overlapping was 3 mm, lack of sidewall
fusion (arrow) was formed in the welded joint. For the over- 3.1.3 Effect of shielding gas method on porosity formation
lapping of 5 mm, overlap (circle) was formed on the sidewall
of the welded groove. This is because that molten metal was The weld bead profiles for welded joints with different
formed on the tip of the feeding wire by absorbing part of the shielding gas method are shown in Fig. 8. It can be
laser energy. When the overlapping was 1 mm, the molten seen that there was large-scale porosity (arrow) in the
metal contacted with the weld pool and it was transferred to welded joint when the shielding gas was delivered by a
the weld pool and spread. However, when the overlapping 3-mm diameter tube inside the weld groove (Fig. 8a).
However, when the shielding gas was delivered by a
15-mm diameter tube on the top of the weld groove, a
welded joint without porosity was achieved (Fig. 8b).
This is because that the shielding gas flow velocity

Fig. 7 Effect of the laser-wire overlapping on multi-pass laser welding Fig. 9 Effect of the feed rate of wire on multi-pass laser welding with
with filler wire addition: a 1 mm, b 3 mm, and c 5 mm filler wire addition: a 4 m/min, b 5 m/min and, c 6 m/min

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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830 1825

was too high when the diameter of the tube was too
small, creating turbulence. When the shielding gas
flowed very gently from the top of the weld groove,
the weld groove was filled with shielding gas, which
can prevent oxygen and air coming into the weld pool.

3.1.4 Effect of the feeding rate of wire on welding efficiency

The weld bead profiles for welded joints with different feed
rates for the filler wire are shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that
when the feed rate of the wire increased from 4 to 6 m/min, the
number of weld passes decreased from 12 to 8. This is because
the depth for each filling pass in the welded joint increases
when the feed rate of the wire increases.
The optimized laser welding parameters are: laser heat in-
put 1.2 kJ/mm, laser-wire over lapping 1 mm, shielding gas Fig. 11 Stress-strain relationship of transverse tensile specimens of
fed from the top of the weld groove by 15 mm diameter tube in welded joint with and without notch
flow rate of 15 l/min, wire feed rate 5 to 6 m/min and welding
speed 0.3 to 0.4 m/min.
UTS of 490 MPa. For the 12 passes welded joint with
a notch, the YS and UTS are 480 and 550 MPa, respec-
3.2 X-ray non-destructive inspection tively, which are higher than those of 12 passes welded
joint without a notch having a YS of 350 MPa and a
The welds were examined by an engineering inspection UTS of 500 MPa. On the contrary, ductilities of the
and consultancy service company (RSA), who are qual- welded joints with a notch are lower than that of
ified to assess welds to ASME IX QW 191: 2013 re- welded joints without notch.
quirements. Their X-ray non-destructive inspection re- As the fracture morphology reflects the strength and
port stated that the welds were found to comply with ductility of tensile specimen, the representative
the acceptance ASME IX standard with no lack of side- fractographs of welded joint with and without a notch
wall fusion, but some limited and acceptable porosity. were analyzed, as shown in Figs. 12 and 13, respective-
The X-ray film is shown in Fig. 10. ly. Figure 12 shows the fracture path in the welded
specimens with a notch: the crack grows in the weld
3.3 Mechanical properties and fracture characteristics metal first and then propagates into the base metal
(Fig. 12a–c). Dimples and micro-voids are shown on
Two different types of specimens were prepared for the the fracture surface of the weld metal and the base
tensile testing. One type is with a notch in the fusion metal, which indicates that the specimens failed in a
zone to show the strengths of the welded area. The characteristic ductile fracture. This is because that the
other type is without a notch to mainly show the frac- ferrite-carbide microstructure of base metal fails in a
tures on the base metal. Figure 11 demonstrates the ductile mode with dimples initiated by granular car-
stress-strain relation curves of transverse tensile speci- bides, and that the martensite having a sufficient mobil-
mens of welded joints with and without notch in the ity of dislocations in the weld metal can also fracture in
weld metal. The figure shows that the fractures occurred ductile dimple mode. However, the sizes of the dimples
in the base metal in the welded specimens without are significantly different in these zones. As shown in
notch. For the 8 passes welded joint with a notch in Fig. 12d, small equiaxed dimples are shown on the
the weld zone, the yield strength (YS) and ultimate fracture surfaces of weld metal. In contrast, large dim-
tensile strength (UTS) were 490 and 580 MPa, respec- ples are usually linked by several smaller dimples on
tively, which are higher than those of 8 passes welded the fracture surface of base metal, as shown in
joint without notch having a YS of 350 MPa and a Fig. 12e. Figure 13 also shows that large dimples are
linked by several smaller dimples on the fracture surface
of the welded joint without a notch. Some researchers
reported that large dimples observed on the fracture sur-
face were consistent with reasonably high ductility,
Fig. 10 X-ray non-destructive inspection film while small equiaxed dimples were consistent with high

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1826 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830

Fig. 12 Fracture path and

morphology of transverse tensile
specimens of welded joint with
notch

strength [18, 19]. Therefore, the strengths of welded 350 MPa and a UTS of 490 MPa (Fig. 14a). The clas-
joint with a notch increase, while the ductilities decrease sic Hall-Petch relationship has been used to describe the
compared with welded joint without a notch, which are relationship between the yield stress and grain size,
consistent with the results obtained in the tensile tests. through the expression
Longitudinal weld metal tensile specimens were com-
pared to those of base metal as for common transverse σy ¼ σ0 þ k y d −1=2 ð1Þ
tensile specimen, fractures occurred in the base metal
where σy is the yield stress, σ0 is the friction stress
instead of the weld metal, as shown in Fig. 14. J1,
needed to move individual dislocations, ky is a positive
J2, and J3 are 8 passes welded joints with laser power
constant of yielding associated with the stress required
of 7, 6.5, and 6 kW and with constant welding speed of
to extend dislocation activity into adjacent unyielded
0.3 m/min, wire feed rate of 6 m/min. The figure shows
grains, and d is the average grain size [20, 21]. This
that the YS and UTS of welded joint with laser power
relationship demonstrates that the yield strength of
of 7 kW are about 590 and 640 MPa, respectively
welded joint with smaller grain sizes is higher.
(Fig. 14b), while the YS and UTS of welded joint with
The stress-strain relation curves also show that the ductil-
laser power of 6.5 kW are about 630 and 700 MPa,
ities of the welded joints are lower than that of base metal,
respectively (Fig. 14c). Additionally, the YS and UTS
which means that post-weld heat treatment on the welded
of welded joint with a laser power of 6 kW were about
joints are required to reduce the strength of the welded joint
710 and 800 MPa, respectively (Fig. 14d), which are
while to increase the ductilities of the welded joints.
higher than those of base metal having a YS of

3.4 Microhardness

Figure 15 shows the microhardness contour map of a 12

passes welded joint. The figure shows that the average
microhardness of the BM was 150 HV. The maximum
microhardness (∼310 HV) was located in the HAZ of
the last welding pass, while the microhardness in the
HAZ of the other welding passes was about 240 HV.
The minimum microhardness on the FZ was located at
the bottom of the welded joint. The diminution of the
microhardness in the HAZ and the FZ means that sub-
Fig. 13 Representative fractograph of welded joint without a notch sequent multi-pass welding have a significant heat

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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830 1827

Fig. 14 Stress-strain relationship of longitudinal weld metal and base metal tensile specimens

treatment effect on the previous welding passes. The It can be seen that in the 1st pass, the microstructure in
average microhardness of the HAZ in the last pass the ICHAZ is composed of ferrite and tempered mar-
was maximum because it was the final filling pass and tensite (Fig. 16a). The microstructures in the FGHAZ,
so there was no tempering effect on it associated with CGHAZ, and FZ are composed of tempered martensite
subsequent welding passes. (Fig. 16b, c, and d). For the 6th pass, the microstructure
in the ICHAZ is also composed of ferrite and tempered
3.5 Microstructure martensite (Fig. 17a). The microstructures in the
FGHAZ and CGHAZ consist of tempered martensite
Figures 16, 17 and 18 show the weld bead profiles and (Fig. 17b and c), but the martensites are not significant-
the microstructures of the 1st pass, 6th pass and the ly decomposed into ferrite and carbides when compared
13th pass in the welded joint with multi-pass welding. with those in the 1st pass. The microstructure in the FZ

Fig. 15 Microhardness 2D
contour map of a welded joint

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1828 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830

Fig. 16 Microstructure of first

pass: a ICHAZ, b FGHAZ, c
CGHAZ, and d FZ

includes bainite, martensite, tempered bainite and tem- 4 Conclusions

pered martensite due to the effect of the filling wire and
the tempering treatment of the subsequent multi-pass In this paper, multi-pass narrow gap laser welding with filling
welding (Fig. 17d). For the 13th pass, the microstruc- wire was developed for joining Grade 43 ferritic steel of
ture in the ICHAZ is composed of ferrite and martensite 30 mm thickness. The following conclusions were drawn:
(Fig. 18a). The microstructures in the FGHAZ and
CGHAZ consisted of martensite (Fig. 18b and c). The (1) Cracking, lack of sidewall fusion and porosity are the
microstructure in the FZ mainly consists of bainite and main potential defects in the multiple-pass narrow gap
martensite (Fig. 18d). Consequently, the microhardness laser welding of thick-section ferritic steel, and these
in the HAZ of the 13th pass (last pass) is at a maxi- defects can be eliminated with appropriate welding pro-
mum when compared with the 1st and 6th pass due to cedures and parameters. Laser heat input can be used to
the martensitic microstructure in the HAZ of 13th pass. control cracking. Laser beam and wire overlapping can

Fig. 17 Microstructure of 6th

pass: a ICHAZ, b FGHAZ, c
CGHAZ, and d FZ

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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2017) 88:1821–1830 1829

Fig. 18 Microstructure of 13th

pass: a ICHAZ, b FGHAZ, c
CGHAZ, and d FZ

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