Heat and mass transfer in the fusion zone of laser beam welding processes

A computational study of heat and mass transfer in weld pools during deep penetration laser beam welding is carried out. The three - dimensional model for the simulation of the temperature and velocity distribution in the weld pool area considers viscous, buoyancy and friction forces as well as surface tension gradients. A finite difference scheme on staggered grids is implemented for the numerical computation. The developed simulation program enables the prediction of the local temperature distribution as well as the resulting weld pool dimensions in agreement with experimental results.