Grant: Alliance Grants

This partnership with ArcelorMittal will improve laser welding technology to increase utilization of a new generation of advanced high strength steels (AHSS). These steels are essential to the automotive industry in Ontario, and incorporate protective coatings for corrosion protection. However, these aluminum and zinc coatings may hamper the weld joint properties after laser welding, since these elements can lead to the formation of unwanted weld metal microstructures. The proposed research studies will use a novel hybrid laser welding system at the University of Waterloo to address the weldability of AHSS with a combination of the latest laser welding technologies including hot-wire feed, and real-time laser depth sensing. This will allow the researchers to identify the optimal chemistry and laser parameters that will mitigate the unwanted effects of the coating elements in the weld zone. The resulting weld joint properties will be evaluated using leading-edge characterization techniques involving electron microscopy which can determine phases formed down to their atomic structures. All of these findings will be widely published in order to allow fabricators to more easily apply laser technologies to join the latest generation of steels, thus enabling higher performance designs and advancing productivity. The end goal will be to enhance the manufacturing capacity to produce lighter vehicles and reduce costs. Various suppliers will benefit from increased knowledge regarding how these AHSS sheet materials respond to laser welding, and this will remove barriers to utilization of the next generation of steels. This will allow ArcelorMittal in Hamilton to address the needs of customers in the Canadian automotive sector, and strengthen their position in the market. In addition, new fundamental knowledge will be generated regarding the phase transformations that occur in these steels, and several graduate students will be trained to implement laser welding on new alloys that are being increasingly in the latest vehicles.