Effect of welding parameters on dissimilar pulsed laser joint between nickel-based alloy Hastelloy X and austenitic stainless steel AISI 304L

This paper investigates the strength and microstructure of dissimilar weld joints between Hastelloy X, which is a nickel-based superalloy, and austenitic stainless steel 304L. Nd-YAG solid-state pulsed laser is used to perform the welding between these two alloys. Two pieces of Hastelloy X and AISI 304L sheets of 1 mm thickness, are placed edge to edge to form a butt welding configuration with each other and are welded using a pulsed laser beam with a maximum power of 400 watts. The effect of welding speed, laser power and pulse width on the strength of the joint, were investigated by changing mentioned parameters values, while the laser beam frequency and the protective gas flow rate were kept constant. Then, test samples are produced to conduct uniaxial tensile tests at room temperature. Results show that the highest-quality dissimilar joint can be found by optimizing the welding power, beam pulse width, and welding speed.