TY - JOUR A1 - Gook, S. A1 - Üstündag, Ömer A1 - Gumenyuk, Andrey A1 - Rethmeier, Michael T1 - Avoidance of end crater imperfections at high-power laser beam welding of closed circumferential welds T2 - Welding in the World N2 - The present work deals with the development of a strategy for the prevention of end crater defects in high-power laser welding of thick-walled circumferential welds. A series of experiments were performed to understand the influence of the welding Parameters on the formation of end crater defects such as pores, cracks, root excess weld metal and shrinkage cavities in the overlap area. An abrupt switch-off of the laser power while closing the circumferential weld leads to a formation of a hole which passes through the whole welded material thickness. A laser power ramp-down causes solidification cracks which are initiated on the transition from full-penetration mode to partial penetration. Defocusing the laser beam led to promising results in terms of avoiding end crater defects. Cracks and pores in the overlap area could be effectively avoided by using defocusing techniques. A strategy for avoiding of end crater imperfections was tested on flat specimens of steel grade S355J2 with a wall thickness of between 8 mm and 10 mm and then transferred on the 10 mm thick pipe sections made of high-strength pipeline steel API5L-X100Q. PB - Springer KW - Laser beam welding KW - Circumferential weld KW - End crater PY - 2019 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50270 AN - OPUS4-50270 SP - 1 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany