In-situ Monitoring on Micro-hardness of Laser Molten Zone on AISI4140 Steel by Spectral Analysis

The real-time monitoring technology plays a significant role in the field of laser aided manufacturing. It not only ensures the product quality, but also saves time and expenditure on the subsequent testing. To develop a method to monitor the properties of laser molten zone, in this paper, the AISI4140 steel samples were melted by laser with different parameters. At the same time, the plasma spectra were detected during real-time laser processing. The evolutions for both emission spectra and hardness of molten zone were researched in this work. To correlate the intensity of spectral line with the hardness of molten zone, the method of dimensionless analysis was used in this experiment. As the results shown, in a dimensionless system, there was a linear correlation between dimensionless micro-hardness of molten zone (H*) and dimensionless laser energy density(ln(δ*)); the dimensionless micro-hardness could be expressed by a piecewise function using dimensionless intensity of Fe I spectral lines(I*), dimensionless velocity(v*) and dimensionless laser energy density as variables; depending on the quantitative relation among all dimensionless, a monitoring system of hardness of molten zone was established; by testing under different parameters of laser processing, the mean error of prediction is lower than 3.1%. It means the emission spectroscopy can be a potential way to monitor the properties of parts prepared by laser processing.