Reliable welding of thick plates in shipbuilding.

Welding Multi-laser beam welding process reduces manufacturing costs

2024-07-24 Source: LZH | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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LZH is researching how to make the welding of thick plates in shipbuilding more reliable. To this end, the scientists are developing a multi-laser beam welding process with adapted beam shaping and a "Digital Twin"-based, integrated quality assurance.

Laser beam welding processes can also be used to join large steel plate thicknesses up to 30 millimeters.(Image: LZH) — Laser beam welding processes can also be used to join large steel plate thicknesses up to 30 millimeters.
(Image: LZH)

Welding in the thick plate range is challenging due to the high weld depths. Researchers at LZH want to make it easier to weld thick-walled components in the 15 mm to 30 mm range with a new multi-laser beam welding process with integrated quality assurance.

Digital twin improves process monitoring

With an integrated quality assurance system, the scientists aim to ensure a consistent, defect-free, and high weld seam quality. To achieve this, they will combine various sensors to capture features related to the characterization of weld joints, such as seam height, seam width, and distortion. Based on these data, they will develop an adaptive welding process control and an integrated quality assurance system that can classify weld seam quality as "okay" and "not okay".

In addition, LZH transfers the sensor data of the quality assurance system into digital twins, which digitally reproduce the process and weld seam based on the various measurement data. With the digital twin, the researchers can document and track the process. The goal is to reduce the overall error rates in automated welding in shipbuilding as well as necessary component inspections in production, and to make the manufacturing process more economical.

Multi-laser beam welding conserves resources

To be able to weld with high quality and without cracks even at material thicknesses of up to 30 mm, the researchers are developing a multi-laser beam welding process for thick plate welding. To do this, they combine three beam sources into a parallel root and filler layer welding process. Through adapted beam shaping, they can specifically influence the formation of the melt pools, temperatures, solidification, and the structure in order to avoid hot cracks.

The goal: The developed one-run process with welding depths exceeding the state of the art should also significantly reduce weld seam layers, production time, additive material and shielding gas consumption. This can conserve resources and lower production costs. Both the processes to be developed and the novel system technology are intended to be later transferred to industrial production facilities in the maritime industry.

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