What Are The Marine Aluminum Welding Processes

 Due to aluminum's low density, high strength, high rigidity and corrosion resistance, ships built with aluminum are 15% to 20% lighter than ships built with steel or other synthetic materials. The high toughness, corrosion resistance and weldability of aluminum alloy provide a good choice for the construction of ships with strict weight requirements. What are the welding processes for marine aluminum alloys?

TIG welding and MIG welding

Commonly used welding methods for aluminum alloys are tungsten inert gas welding (TIG welding) and molten inert gas welding (MIG welding). The electrode of TIG welding is refractory metal tungsten or tungsten alloy rod. The electrode does not melt during the arc combustion process, so it is easy to maintain a constant arc length and the welding process is stable.

During welding, the electrodes, arc zone and molten metal are all under the protection of inert gas to isolate them from the air. Tungsten argon arc welding is commonly used, that is, argon is used as the shielding gas. Aluminum alloy TIG welding generally uses AC power, and the cathode atomization effect of the negative half-wave current can be used to effectively clean the oxide film on the aluminum alloy surface and improve fusion.

MIG welding uses welding wire as electrode and filler metal, and welding is performed under the protection of inert gas. Since the welding wire is used as the electrode, high-density welding current can be used, so the infiltration of the base metal like 5052 Al is large, the deposition speed of the filler metal is fast, and the deformation of the weldment is smaller than that of TIG welding. The aluminum alloy molten electrode argon arc welding adopts DC reverse connection, which has a good cathode atomization effect and can effectively ensure the quality requirements of the weld.

After several years of development, MIG welding has become increasingly mature from welding equipment, welding materials to welding processes, and it has become possible to obtain high-quality MIG welds. At present, more than 90% of foreign aluminum alloys are welded by MIG welding. In view of the outstanding advantages of marine aluminum welding nd MIG welding, the mature aluminum alloy MIG welding process has been studied and proposed to provide a guarantee for the application of aluminum alloys in shipbuilding.

Laser welding

Laser welding technology has a series of advantages such as concentrated heat input, small workpiece deformation, fast welding speed, and good processing quality. The use of laser manufacturing technology in the shipbuilding industry will definitely shorten the ship construction cycle and improve and stabilize ship manufacturing quality.

In the process of welding 5083 sheet with CO2 laser, the weld seam formation of 5083 alloy is greatly affected by welding conditions, laser parameters and shielding gas composition, mainly in the forming quality. In the case of penetration welding, the stability of the laser welding process is poor.

The fillet weld welding of 6mm thick 5083 marine aluminum alloy T-shaped member was realized by CO2 laser wire-filling welding method. The laser beam incidence angle, action position, and the matching of welding speed and wire feeding speed have a great influence on the fillet weld formation of T-shaped members. Under the optimized parameters, welding of 6mm thick plates can obtain satisfactory weld formation. Welcome to leave message below to inquire marine aluminum sheet price.

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