Controlling Welding Residual Stress and Distortion of High-Strength Aluminum Alloy Thin Plates by a Trailing Hybrid High-Speed Gas Fluid Field

This paper presents an investigation of the welding residual stress and distortion of LY12 high-strength aluminum alloy (6061) by improving the local welding thermal and mechanical fields. A trailing hybrid high-speed gas fluid method was proposed and applied to decrease the welding residual stress and distortion of 6061 aluminum alloy efficiently. Firstly, the temperature and stress fields were calculated using the finite element simulation method, considering a trailing hybrid high-speed gas fluid field. The distance between the aerodynamic load and the heat source action was a key factor determined by the simulation method. In addition, the reasonable effective range of gas pressure was obtained. Subsequently, welding and distortion tests were conducted on the self-developed device under conventional welding and high-speed gas fluid field conditions. The results showed that an aerodynamic load under 30 MPa of gas pressure was available near the area at a distance of 20–28 mm from the heat source for thin plate welding distortion. The peak longitudinal residual tensile stresses in the weld’s mid-length section decreased by 77.73%, the peak residual compressive stresses decreased by 69.23% compared with conventional welding, and the deflection distortion disappeared almost entirely. The maximum deflection of the distortion was only 1.79 mm, which was 83.76% lower than the 11.02 mm of the conventional welding distortion. This validates that the method can simultaneously and greatly eliminate the welding residual stress and distortion.