Study on HABW Explosive Welding

We have successfully fabricated metal lined chemical equipments by means of HABW expolsive welding process, instead of conventional methods such as fusion welding or using clad plates. The HABW explosive welding process has the following good features that have been considered not practical to date. 1) Joining of different metals is possible, and any appropriate metal can be selected from among such materials as Al, Cu, Ni, Ti, Zr, Ta and their alloys, etc. which is suitable for a particular equipment under question. 2) There being no diffusion from the base plate, the new process is suitable for lining of thin sheets-0.3-3.0 nun thick-for anticorrosive equipments. 3) No external heat being applied, the process is free of such problems as might develop from heat effects and intermediate alloys which are usual by-products in the conventional methods. 4) The required amount of explosives being much smaller than that of the conventional explosive welding for total surface cladding, the HABW process can be conducted in any factory compounds, and the use of stable and highly efficient explosives eliminates possible hazards which otherwise might be expected in the operations. 5) No large facilities nor skilled workers are necessary. Required manufacturing cost can be reduced to a minimum by shortening of working time and elimina tion of after treatment, etc. In this paper, the properties of explosively welded metal and manufacturing process of metal lined equipments are described, and the merits and applications of this new technique are discussed.