Reduction of residual stress and deformation in electron beam welding by using multiple beam technique

The electron beam could be controlled by magnetic field for fast deflection, in which way multi-beam could be produced by deflection technique. The multi-beams run simultaneously for material processing with different heat input and positions. Therefore, it is possible to adjust the thermal effects and optimize the process. In this paper, the generation of multi-beams in electron beam welding (EBW) was investigated, and the processes of EBW with multi-beams were also investigated by both the numerical simulation methods, i.e., finite element analysis (FEA), and the experiments. The result shows that the residual stress of EBW could be minimized by using the multiple beam technique, and at the same time the welding deformation could also be reduced with the optimized parameters. © 2008 Higher Education Press.