Embrittlement of welded joints produced by pulsed laser welding

Alloys and steels based on iron and nickel are the most widely used structural materials. They are characterised by a wide range of service properties obtained under various processing influences. These influences include treatment with a pulsed neodymium laser which enables hardening, welding and cutting of these materials. In this work, investigations were carried out into the effect of the pulsed periodic laser effect on the nature of failure of butt welded joints. The experiments took place in Kvant industrial equipment with a frequency of f=1 Hz, a pulse time tau =2.6 msec and a pulse energy of up to approx10 J, and the diameter of the heating spot was d=0.8 mm. (Materials: Armco iron, NP-2 nickel, 50N alloy, and 12Kh18N10T steel.)