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Welded joints of poor welding surface quality are sensitive to stress concentrations, affecting both the tensile strength of workpieces and the fluidity of liquids and gases in pressure and liquid containers. Orthogonal experiments involving the laser welding of 1-mm-thick duplex stainless steel sheets were conducted using different electric current, pulse width and frequency values in order to analyse the effect of welding properties on the surface characteristics of the welded joints. Rapid judgement regarding the welded joint properties was made based on the observed welding surface quality. The results show that an even phase proportion and grain refinement are not necessarily guaranteed to provide good welding surface quality. A satisfactory welding surface quality characterised by a smaller spot pitch or spot pitch difference, smaller weld width, reduced surface roughness and valley depth of surface waviness implies better welded joint mechanical characteristics and a more even microstructure. The specimen with the most suitable welding parameters and the greatest heat input can reach the lowest volume fraction of ferrite phase of 42.5% and the highest tensile strength of 848 MPa, and its surface quality is the best.

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Al-Ti-B intermediate alloys are widely used as grain refiners in aluminum alloys owing to the presence of Al3Ti and TiB2 phases. However, the existence of Zr in aluminum alloy melts often results in coarse grain size, leading to Al-Ti-B failure called Zr poisoning. There are three kinds of poisoning mechanisms related to TiB2, Al3Ti, and a combination of TiB2 and Al3Ti for Zr. First, Zr forms ZrB2 or Ti2Zr with TiB2 in Al-Ti-B to reduce the nucleation ability. Second, Zr existing in the aluminum melt with a high melting point Al3Zr then attracts Ti to reduce the dispersion of Ti as a growth inhibitor. Third, Zr reacts with Al3Ti on TiB2 surface to form Al3Zr, thereby increasing the degree of mismatch with Al and diminishing the refiner’s ability as a nucleation substrate. To gain a better understanding of the mechanism of Zr poisoning, the first principle was used in this study to calculate the adhesion works (ZrB2∥Al3Ti), (Ti2Zr∥Al3Ti), (Al3Zr∥Al3Ti), (Al3Ti∥Al), (TiB2∥Al3Zr), and (Al3Zr∥Al), as well as the surface energy of Al3Zr and adsorption energies of Al to Al3Ti or Al3Zr. The results demonstrated that Zr poisoning originated from the second guess. Zr element exiting in aluminum melt led to the formation of an Al3Zr (001) surface. The interfacial adhesion work of Al3Zr (001)∥Al3Ti (001) was not weaker than that of TiB2∥Al3Ti. As a result, Al3Zr first combined with Al3Ti to significantly decline the adsorption of Al3Ti (001) on Al, losing its role as a nucleating agent and grain coarsening. Overall, to prevent failure of the grain refiner in Zr containing aluminum melt, the adhesion work interface between the generated phase of the grain refiner and Al3Zr must remain lower to avoid the combination of the generated phase of grain refiner with Al3Zr. In sum, these findings look promising for evaluating future effects of grain refinement in Zr containing aluminum melt.

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