Comparison Between Phase Field and ALE Methods to Model the Keyhole Digging During Spot Laser Welding

V. Bruyere[1], C. Touvrey[1], P. Namy[2]
[1]CEA-DAM, Is-sur-Tille, France
[2]SIMTEC, Grenoble, France
Published in 2013

Nowadays, spot laser welding is a full-fledged part of industrial manufacturing and is routinely used due to its advantages. It generates very located temperature gradients, and therefore, induces small distortions in the pieces. The COMSOL Multiphysics® software is used to model the interaction stage of an isolated impact made with a Nd:YAG pulsed laser. The free surface evolution has been precisely described with a moving mesh method (ALE method) by imposing the recoil pressure and the energy deposition as boundary conditions. The results have been compared with those obtained with a fixed mesh method (Phase Field method) for isothermal and thermal cases. A discussion is proposed to choose the more appropriate method to model this problem.