Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Effect of beam oscillating pattern on weld characterization of laser

welding of AA6061-T6 aluminum alloy
Lei Wang a, Ming Gao a,⁎, Chen Zhang a,b,⁎, Xiaoyan Zeng a
a
Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China
b
School of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430073, PR China

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Beam oscillation stabilizes the process

and improves weld morphology.
• Beam oscillation increases the fraction
of equiaxed grains in weld fusion zone.
• Beam oscillation has no effect on weld
strength but obvious effect on elonga-
tion.
• Circular oscillation obtains the soundest
weld with the best mechanical proper-
ties.
• Mechanism is discussed by the stirring
effect on laser keyhole and melt flow.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Laser oscillating welding was employed to join 4 mm-thick AA6061-T6 aluminum alloy in butt configuration.
Received 30 May 2016 Three beam oscillating patterns that are transversal, longitudinal and circular were studied. The beam oscillation
Received in revised form 30 June 2016 improved the weld morphologies and promoted the formation of equiaxed grain within the fusion zone due to
Accepted 12 July 2016
stirring effect. The circular oscillation obtained the soundest weld, the finest grain and the most amount of
Available online 13 July 2016
equiaxed grains within the weld. The beam oscillation almost had no effect on the tensile strength of the weld,
Keywords:
but increased the ductility obviously. The strain of circularly oscillating weld was up to 8%, 38% higher than the
Laser welding weld without beam oscillation. The ductility improvement was attributed to the decrease of weld morphological
Beam oscillation defects and the increase of equiaxed grains. Besides, the improving mechanisms of weld characterization were
Aluminum discussed by the beam oscillating effect on the behaviors of laser keyhole and melt flow.
Microstructure © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tensile property

1. Introduction advantages of high power density, lower heat input, big aspect ratio
and narrow heat affected zone (HAZ) [4]. However, the tiny focused
As one of the most important light-weight structural material, beam spot limits the industrial application of laser welding because it
aluminum (Al) and its alloys have widely used in automobile, aircraft requires high accuracy. Ref. [5] claimed that a maximum gap for sin-
and high-speed train [1–3]. How to achieve their high quality, high effi- gle-spot laser welding would be no more than 0.2 mm, which is hard
ciency welding has been the research focus in the welding and joining to be achieved in most of industrial applications. Besides, laser welding
field. Laser welding would be potential to achieve this goal due to the of Al alloys is challenging because of their high reflectivity to laser beam,
low viscosity, high thermal conductivity and serious burring-loss of
alloying element [6–9], which causes unstable process, high porosity
⁎ Corresponding authors at: Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (WNLO),
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China.
and other metallurgical defects.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Gao), [email protected] Previous studies about electron beam welding demonstrated that
(C. Zhang). beam oscillation has the potential to improve solidification behavior

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2016.07.053
0264-1275/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
708 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

and pool geometry [10,11]. It has been used to join dissimilar metals
[12]. These achievements guide the development of laser welding
with beam oscillation, which is called laser oscillating welding for sim-
ple. Using the mechanical swing of welding head, Busuttil welded
6xxx serials Al alloys by laser oscillating welding [13]. He found that
the beam oscillation reduced both the temperature gradient of molten
pool and the weld hot cracking sensitivity. Zhang found that the nitro-
gen and argon porosity could be suppressed by beam oscillation under
the frequency of 20–30 Hz in laser oscillating welding of mild steel
with mechanical swing [14]. Rubben obtained sound tailored blanks
by using the mechanical swing of laser beam to widen the molten
pool [15]. It demonstrated that the beam oscillation can increases the
fit-up gap tolerance, and then stabilize the process and improve the
bead morphology.
Although some achievements have been obtained by above-men-
tioned studies, the mechanical beam oscillation has its inherent disad-
vantages such as low frequency and poor stability. The emergence of
high-power galvanometer scanner has promoted the development of
laser oscillating welding due to high frequency, high precision and mul-
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental set-up.
tiple patterns. Some studies of laser oscillating welding with galvanom-
eter scanner have been carried out recently. For example, Kraetzsch and
Smith found that the cracks of dissimilar Al/Cu and Al/Ti welds could be In Fig. 2, the oscillating patterns used are three types that were trans-
reduced by beam oscillation [16,17]. Vänskä found that the assembling versal, longitudinal and circular. Since many studies have demonstrated
misalignment of 5 mm-thick stainless steel tube can be overcome by that the porosity reduces the mechanical properties dramatically [24,
using beam oscillation to widen the weld [18]. Yamazaki found that 25], a series of experiments were carried out in each oscillating pattern
the spatters occurred at the beam spot reversal points in laser trans- to optimize the parameters to get sound welds free of porosity previous-
versely oscillating welding [19]. Kim and Kang studied the effects of ly. Only the optimized parameters were taken into account in this study
welding parameters on weld cracks with the frequency no more than to investigate the real relationship between microstructure and tensile
50 Hz [20,21]. Berend found that high frequency oscillation could elim- properties. The optimized parameters used are shown in Table 1.
inate ‘humping’ defect of Al alloy weld, and stabilize the process in high After welding, as shown in Fig. 3, both the cross-section and horizon-
speed [22]. section specimens were prepared for microstructure observation. The
All above studies showed that laser oscillating welding is potential to microstructure was observed by optical microscope (OM) and electron
stabilize the process and improve the welding quality. However, most of backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The metallurgical specimens for OM
studies about Al alloys are carried out under low frequency and linear were etched by a solution of 1 ml HF, 1.5 ml HCL, 2.5 ml HNO3 and
oscillation, and focused on process stability. So far no reports have 95 ml H2O with an etching time of 20 s. The EBSD specimens were pre-
paid attention on the effects of beam oscillating patterns on weld char- pared by electropolishing with an electrolyte of 10 ml perchloric acid
acterization of Al alloys including microstructure and mechanical prop- and 90 ml ethanol. The Vickers micro-hardness was tested across trans-
erties. Based on the results that the authors had obtained the sound verse section using a 0.98 N load and a loading time of 20 s, whose test-
AA6061-T6 welds under three oscillation patterns with high frequency ing position is shown in Fig. 3. The cross tensile specimens were
after a series of experiments, this paper aimed to explore the effects of prepared according to the standard of ASTM: E8/E8M-13a, as shown
three beam oscillation patterns on the characterization of laser welded
AA6061-T6 Al alloy.

2. Experimental procedures

The base material (BM) used was 4 mm-thick AA6061-T6 Al alloy

with the size of 200 × 100 mm2. Before welding, the oxidation film
and the oil pollution on the specimens were removed by 10% sodium
hydroxide solution at 70 °C and 30% nitric acid solution at room temper-
ature in sequence, and then were cleaned by acetone.
The experimental set-up used was illustrated as Fig. 1, which
contained an IPG YLR-6000 fiber laser, a welding head and a six-axis in-
dustrial robot. This fiber laser was a continue beam mode with the
wavelength of 1070 nm and the beam parameter product (BPP) of
6.9 mm mrad. The radius of focused laser beam spot was about
0.167 mm. The welding head consisted of a collimation unit with focal
length 200 mm, a galvanometer scanner unit and an f-theta focusing
unit with focal length 250 mm. The welding head was driven by the
robot to move linearly, which was named as X-direction. The beam os-
cillation was controlled by the galvanometer scanner. During welding,
the weld surface and root were protected by gas nozzles using pure
argon, whose set-up had been represented in previous study [23]. The
gas flow of the upper and root nozzles was 20 l/min and 10 l/min, re-
spectively. The molten pool and keyhole were observed by Phantom
V710 high-speed camera with Cavitar Cavilux HF illumination, whose Fig. 2. Schematic diagrams of beam oscillating pattern and the resultant track of laser
frame rate and exposure time were 7000 fps and 1 μs, respectively. beam.
 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717 709

Table 1
Welding parameters.

Weld no. #0 #1 #2 #3

Oscillating pattern No Transversal Longitude Circle

Laser power, kW 3.7 3.9 3.8 4
Welding speed, m/min 2 2 2 2
Oscillating diameter/width, mm – 1 1 1
Oscillating frequency, Hz – 200 200 180
Beam defocused distance, mm 0 0 0 0

in Fig. 4. Some tensile specimens were machined to remove the rein-

forcement to investigate the effect of microstructures, while some spec-
imens kept the raw surface to reveal the effect of weld morphologies. Fig. 4. Geometry of tensile specimen.

Two specimens were tested for each surface condition.

3. Results
center line of beam oscillation. The keyhole expansion and the spatters
caused by the melt ejection easily appear when the beam moves to the
3.1. Weld morphology
reversal position that is also the edge of the oscillation area, as the t2
moment in Fig. 7b and t3 moment in Fig. 7c. It can be found that the mol-
In Fig. 5, the weld surface morphology, especially the root surface
ten pool of transversely oscillating welding is characterized by a shape
can be changed by beam oscillation. The welds are widen by the beam
that is wide in the front but narrow at the rear, while that of longitudi-
transverse and circular oscillation due to the increase of the oscillating
nally oscillating welding is characterized by a elongation ellipse. More-
area of laser beam in width direction. The circularly oscillating weld
over, more violent melt flow causes the hump wave in transversely
can obtain the smoothest surface with uniform ripples and free of spat-
oscillating welding, as the t4 moment in Fig. 7b.
ters, while both transversely and longitudinally oscillating welds have
For the circularly oscillating welding, in Fig. 7d, the keyhole and the
rougher surface with obvious undercut and a large amount of spatters.
melt flow of molten pool keeps stable. No melt ejection and no obvious
In Fig. 6, obvious concave and convex appear on the top surface and
spatters appear in the process of welding. The molten pool is character-
root of the weld without beam oscillation. These defects can be im-
ized by a nearly round shape and a circular melt flow.
proved by beam oscillation, although there are still some unsmooth
transitions within the top and root surfaces of the transversely and lon-
gitudinally oscillating welds. Relatively, the circularly oscillating weld is
3.3. Weld microstructure
the best sound, the top and surfaces of which are without any unsmooth
transitions.
In Fig. 8, the dendrite morphology within the oscillating welds is dif-
ferent with that of the weld without oscillation. Especially for the circu-
3.2. Characteristics of molten pool larly oscillating weld, the continuous growth of the dendrites is
disturbed, which breaks the dendrites and causes a more dispersive
For laser welding without beam oscillation, as shown in Fig. 7a, the structure compared to other welds.
keyhole usually experiences a periodic cycle of expansion and shrink- In Fig. 9a and b, the fusion zone (FZ) of the weld without oscillation
age. During keyhole expansion stage, plenty of liquid metal eject out is composed of the axial grains growing along welding direction in the
from the molten pool to form the spatters because of the combining ef- center and the columnar grains growing from fusion line to the center.
fect of unstable laser power inside the keyhole, the interference of liquid This axial grain is commonly observed in the welding with low speed
metal and plasma on laser beam and the evaporation of metal vapor [26, [28,29].
27]. After the ejection, the keyhole shrinks, and the surrounding molten In Fig. 9c to h, the beam oscillation promotes the transfer of the
pool sinks, as the t3 moment in Fig. 7a. grains in FZ center from axial structure to equiaxed structure, although
For the transversely and longitudinally oscillating welding, in Fig. 7b the surrounding sides keep columnar structure. The fraction of the
and c, the keyhole periodically and symmetrically moves along the equiaxed grains to whole weld profile increases in the sequence of
transverse oscillation, longitudinal oscillation and circular oscillation,
which is 27%, 38% and 52%, respectively. In Fig. 9i to l, it can be found
that the mean grain size of circularly oscillating weld is minimum
(about 50 μm), while that of transversely and longitudinally oscillating
welds is coarser, which is about 110 μm and 80 μm, respectively.

3.4. Microhardness

In Fig. 10, the mean FZ microhardness of circularly oscillating weld is

maximum, about 79 HV, while that of transversely oscillating weld is
minimum, about 67 HV. Both the FZ and the HAZ of oscillating welds
are widened because the beam oscillation widens the acting area of
laser beam and increases the heat input. According to the microhard-
ness data, the circularly oscillating weld has the widest FZ and HAZ.
The microhardness result is well corresponding to the microstructure.
The circularly oscillating weld has the finest and the most dispersive
dendrites so that it has the highest micro hardness according to Hall-
Fig. 3. Observation positions of microstructure specimens and microhardness test. Petch relationship.
710 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

Fig. 5. Top surface and root morphologies, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.

3.5. Tensile properties would be the reason reducing the strain of the weld with reinforcement
lower than the weld without reinforcement under same conditions.
In Fig. 11a and b, all the welds whether they are with or without re-
inforcement are at the same level, which are at the range of 220 MPa to 4. Discussion
231 MPa, about 70% of the BM. It indicates that the beam oscillation and
weld surface conditions have little effects on weld tensile strength. 4.1. Formation of weld morphology
However, the beam oscillation plays a big role in weld ductility. For
the welds without reinforcement, the circularly oscillating weld has In laser welding, the weld morphology usually depends on the inter-
the biggest strain of about 8%, 38% higher than that of the weld without action between laser beam and molten pool. In this study, the laser en-
oscillation (5.8%). The strain of transversely and longitudinal oscillating ergy distribution and the melt flow in molten pool would be changed by
welds is about 6.38% and 7%, respectively. For the welds without rein- beam oscillating. In terms of this view, the formation of weld morphol-
forcement, the strains have similar trend with those with reinforce- ogy is discussed as follows.
ment, but a little lower under same oscillation pattern, which is 7.7%, According to the coordinate system shown in Fig. 1, the moving track
6% and 6.4% for circular, transverse and longitude oscillation welds, of beam spot can be expressed by Eq. (1) [30,31]:
respectively.

In Fig. 12 and Fig. 13, it can be seen that all the welds fracture in the xðt Þ¼x0 þvtþAx  sinð2π f x tþφx Þ
yðt Þ¼y0 þAy  sinð2π f y tþφy Þ
ð1Þ
FZ, and all the fractures propagate with a direction approximately 45° to
stress direction, indicating a ductile shear fracture. For the welds with
reinforcement, the fracture position locates at the surface areas with where x(t) and y(t) are functions of beam spot position that are depen-
abrupt changes, such as notch and undercut. It means that these defects dent on time t, x0 and y0 are initial positions, v is welding speed, Ax and

Fig. 6. Cross-section morphologies, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.
 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717 711

Fig. 7. High-speed video frames of molten pool, (a) without beam oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation. Where, the HTZ is the highest
temperature zone within molten pool, which is around the keyhole and not covered by the oxidation film.

Ay are the amplitudes along x-direction and y-direction respectively, fx Based on Eq. (2) and the parameters in Table 2, the vr under different
and fy are oscillation frequency along x-direction and y-direction re- beam oscillation patterns as a function of the time in one cycle can be
spectively, φx and φy are initial phase angles. drawn in Fig. 14.
Taking the deviation of Eq. (1), the relationship between beam spot Since the laser density herein can be assumed approximately to be
moving velocity and the time, t can be obtained, which is expressed by Gaussian [32,33], the distribution of laser beam can be described by
Eq. (2). Eq. (3).
8 v ¼x0 ðt Þ¼vþ2A π f cosð2π f tþφ Þ
< x 0 x x x x
vy ¼y ðt Þ¼2Ay π f y  cosð2π f y tþφy Þ
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð2Þ Iðr Þ ¼ I 0  e−2r =r 20
¼ I0  e−2ðx þy2 Þ=r 20
2 2

: v ¼ v2 þ v2 ð3Þ
r x y

where, vx and vy are the velocity components along X-direction and Y- where, I0 is the incident laser intensity, r is the distance to the center of
direction respectively, vr is the actual velocity of beam spot. beam spot, and r0 is the radius of beam spot.

Fig. 8. OM images of FZ microstructure, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.
712 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

Fig. 9. EBSD results of weld microstructure, (a, c, e, g) cross-section IPF images of the weld without oscillation, with transverse oscillation, with longitudinal oscillation and with circular
oscillation; (b, d, f, h) horizon-section IPF image of the weld without oscillation, with transverse oscillation, with longitudinal oscillation and with circular oscillation; (i)–(l) grain size
distribution statistics of the weld without oscillation, with transverse oscillation, with longitudinal oscillation and with circular oscillation.

Fig. 10. Microhardness profile across weld cross-section, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.
 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717 713

Fig. 11. Stress-strain curves of the welds, (a) with reinforcement, (b) without reinforcement.

The laser energy acting on molten pool can be determined by follow- For the laser welding without beam oscillation, as shown in Fig. 16a,
ing integral Eq. (4) [32]. the liquid metal flows from the keyhole to the rear of molten pool by the
driving of plasma recoil pressure and Marangoni force, which forms a
Z T small molten pool [33,34]. On the other hand, the beam spot moving ve-
Eðx; yÞ ¼ Iðx; y; t Þdt ð4Þ locity is low and constant due to none of beam oscillation. It means that
0
the plasma recoil pressure is concentrated on the small molten pool to
form a strong interaction between laser and molten pool. Then, the
where, E is energy flux of laser irradiated on the materials, and T is the welding process becomes unstable, and a rough weld surface occurs.
time of one cycle period. For transversely oscillating welding, the energy absorbed by laser
Substituting Eq. (1) into Eq. (3), and then taking an integration of Eq. keyhole (Ek) frequently varies with the vr in one cycle according to the
(4), the energy distributions of the three beam oscillations in one cycle data in Figs. 14 and 15. The vr is the minimum and the corresponding
period can be illustrated in Fig. 15. Ek is the maximum at the reversal points, while the vr is the maximum
According to above figures and molten pool observations, the forma- and the Ek is the minimum at the center position. The high frequency
tion of weld morphology is illustrated in Fig. 16, and described as change of the Ek along width direction leads to an unstable keyhole,
follows. and meanwhile forms a front-wide and rear-narrow molten pool. As

Fig. 12. Fracture morphologies of the welds without reinforcement, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.
714 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

Fig. 13. Cross-section morphologies of the welds with reinforcement before and after tensile test, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular
oscillation.

Table 2
Calculation parameters of Eqs. (1) and (2).

Parameters Without oscillation Transverse oscillation Longitudinal oscillation Circular oscillation

v, m/min 2 2 2 2
Ax and Ay, mm – Ax = 0, Ay = 0.5 Ax = 0.5, Ay = 0 Ax = Ay = 0.5
fx and fy, Hz – fx = 0, fy = 200 fx = 200, fy = 0 fx = fy = 180
Δφ = φx − φy – 0 0 π/2

shown in Fig. 16b, the liquid metal is obstructed by the lateral wall when All these reasons result in the most stable process and the soundest
the beam moves to the reversal points. It causes the liquid metal accu- weld during circularly oscillating welding.
mulates at the front of molten pool to form the undercut rather than
flows to the rear fluently. Besides, a portion of liquid metal returning 4.2. Microstructure formation
from the front will encounter that returning from the rear. It forms a
hump zone in the middle of molten pool, which decreases the stability The microstructure results indicate that the equiaxed grains are pro-
of melt flow and forms a rough weld surface. moted by the beam oscillation in FZ of weld. The formation of grain
For longitudinally oscillating welding, the Ek also frequently varies structure during welding usually occurs in mushy zone, which is the
with the vr in one cycle, which is similar with that in transversely oscil- coexisting region of the dendrites and liquid phase [35]. In general,
lating welding. However, the beam oscillation linearly with the moving
direction of molten pool is beneficial for improving the process stability
because the molten pool is characterized by an elongated ellipse. As
shown in Fig. 16c, the elongated molten pool provides enough space
for the liquid metal to flow to the rear along longitude direction when
the beam moves to the reversal point B, although the liquid metal is
blocked by the front wall and flows backward when the beam moves
to the front reversal point A. It causes a smoother melt flow and a better
weld surface in comparison of transversely oscillating welding.
For the circularly oscillating welding, the vr almost keeps constant,
and is higher than laser welding without beam oscillation by one
order of magnitude. These both cause a stable Ek, and avoid the concen-
tration of plasma recoil pressure on one position within molten pool.
Consequently, the process is stabilized and the spatters disappear dur-
ing welding. On the other hand, as shown in Fig. 16d, the circular oscil-
lation drives a stable melt flow rotating around the center of beam
oscillation, which is not obstructed by the wall of molten pool. The en- Fig. 14. Actual velocity, vr of beam spot moving as a function of the time in one cycle of
larged size of molten pool also releases the humped liquid metal easily. different beam oscillations.
 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717 715

Fig. 15. Computed energy flux distribution of three beam oscillations in one cycle, (a) transverse oscillation, (b) longitudinal oscillation, (c) circular oscillation.

the acquiring of equiaxed grain during welding can be classified into the high-frequency oscillation. The turbulence will break the growth
five types, which are: (1) reducing temperature gradient by means of of columnar dendrites in the mushy zone, and promote the formation
slowing welding speed, preheating, some methods to enlarge molten of equiaxed dendrites. However, this turbulence is weak in the rear of
pool area, etc. [36,37]; (2) changing the chemical compositions of mol- molten pool because the beam oscillation is in the front of molten pool.
ten pool; (3) increasing constitutional supercoiling; (4) inoculation by As a result, only a small number of equiaxed grains appear in the weld.
adding microelements such as Ti and B [38]; (5) stirring the molten In Fig. 17e and f, the beam oscillation in longitudinally oscillating
pool to break the dendrite [39,40]. welding that is line with the moving direction of molten pool, which
Considering no filling materials is used and some stirring effects are can produce a stronger turbulence in the rear in comparison of trans-
caused by beam oscillation, the formation of equiaxed structure in this verse oscillation because the melt flow to the rear is more fluently.
study would be attributed to above reasons of types (1) and (5). The enhanced melt flow in the rear has a stronger penetration effect
Based on this view, the microstructure formation can be drawn in Fig. on the mushy zone. The repeating penetration of the melt flow re-
17, and discussed as follows. melts and limits the columnar dendrites, but promotes the growth of
In Fig. 17a and b, the molten pool without beam oscillation has the equiaxed grains in comparison of transversely oscillating welding.
highest temperature gradient due to the smallest size. It is beneficial In Fig. 17g, the molten pool of circularly oscillating has the smallest
to form the columnar dendrite in the weld in terms of welding solidifi- temperature gradient due to the largest size, which is in favor of the for-
cation theory [35]. On the other hand, the heat flux flows to the rear sta- mation of equiaxed grain. Meanwhile, as shown in Fig. 17h, the circular
bly along weld centerline because there is no effect of beam oscillation, melt flow stirs the molten pool and penetrates into the mushy zone con-
and then the highest temperature gradient direction is parallel to the tinuously. A lot of tiny turbulence occur among the dendrites by the stir-
welding direction [29]. This causes the dendrites nearby weld centerline ring of melt flow, which accelerate the re-melting and breaking of the
to grow into axial grains along heat flux direction. formed dendrites. Meanwhile, the circular melt flow drives the broken
In Fig. 17c and d, the melt flow in the rear of molten pool of trans- and partially melted grains into the molten pool and the mushy zone,
versely oscillating welding is disturbed to form some turbulence by which provides more nuclei for the growth of equiaxed grain [39].

Fig. 16. Schematic drawings of molten pool and melt flow, (a) without oscillation, (b) transverse oscillation, (c) longitudinal oscillation, (d) circular oscillation.
716 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717

Fig. 17. Schematic drawings of the influence of melt flow on microstructure formation, (a) without oscillation; (b) detail of the rectangle frame in a; (c) transverse oscillation; (d) detail of
the rectangle frame in c; (e) longitudinal oscillation; (f) detail of the rectangle frame in e; (g) circular oscillation; (h) detail of the rectangle frame in g.

Therefore, the weld with circular oscillation has the most and the finest grains in the weld because the equiaxed structure is isotropic but the co-
equiaxed grains. lumnar structure is anisotropic. This increases the isotropy of the weld,
which is beneficial to increase the strain by preventing the crack propa-
4.3. Mechanism in mechanical properties gation during tensile test [43]. On the other hand, for the weld with re-
inforcement, the morphology improvement may be the other reason to
In general, the strengthening mechanism of wrought AA6061-T6 Al increase the stain, which can be demonstrated by the truth that the dis-
alloy is attributed to precipitation strengthening and grain refining. continuous changes such as undercut and notch are well corresponding
During fusion welding whether it has beam oscillation or not, the pre- to the crack initiation. Therefore, the circularly oscillating weld obtains
cipitation strengthening would disappear because of the dissolution of the biggest strain because of the smoothest morphology and the highest
the precipitates of β″-Mg2Si [41,42]. Besides, Fig. 9 shows that, the fraction of equiaxed grains.
grain sizes of the welds obtained in this study are in the same order of
magnitude, indicating the beam oscillation cannot result in obvious re- 5. Conclusions
fined strengthen. Thus, the welds with different oscillations have similar
tensile stress. (1) Three beam oscillation patterns including transverse, longitudi-
However, the strain of the welds increased and varied with beam os- nal and circular all could improve the surface morphologies
cillation patterns. It mainly depends on the increase of the equiaxed of the weld in comparison of pure laser weld without beam
 L. Wang et al. / Materials and Design 108 (2016) 707–717 717

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