Spectroscopic Studies of Dissimilar Al-Cu Laser Welding

This paper describes a novel method to analyze the effect of the fiber laser induced plasma on welding of dissimilar Al and Cu. Based on spectroscopic studies, specific wavelengths were found to be suitable for process monitoring during laser welding. For aluminum, the double peak at 394.4 and 396.1 nm was studied, for cu the 578 nm peak was studied. The characteristic peaks were observed by multiple photodiodes equipped with narrow optical filters with varying FWHM. Analyzing the plasma emissions of the process enabled to detect material changes in the plasma plume. This novel method has the advantage of higher sampling rate combined with reduced costs compared to a spectrometer and is thus able to capture the process dynamics.