Residual stress and distortion continue to be important issues in shipbuilding and are still subject to large amounts of research. This paper demonstrates how the type of welding process influences the amount of distortion. Many shipyards currently use submerged arc welding (SAW) as their welding process of choice. In this manuscript, the authors compare welds made by SAW with DC gas metal arc welding, pulsed gas metal arc welding, Fronius cold metal transfer (CMT), autogenous laser and laser hybrid welding on butt welds in 4 mm thick DH36 ship plate. Laser and laser hybrid welding were found to produce the lowest distortion. Nevertheless, a considerable improvement can be achieved with the pulsed gas metal arc welding and CMT processes. The paper seeks to understand the relationship between heat input, fusion area, measured distortion and the residual stress predicted from a simple numerical model, and the residual stresses validated with experimental data.

The depth of penetration achieved in continuous wave (CW) laser welding results from a balance of many complicated phenomena, which are linked with the characteristics of the heat source. In this work, the laser welding process has been investigated in terms of basic laser material interaction parameters: power density and interaction time. It has been shown that these two parameters are insufficient to characterize the laser welding process. Thus, a third parameter, specific point energy, has been introduced, which along with the power density and the interaction time allowed the welding process to be uniquely defined. It has been shown that the depth of penetration is mainly controlled by the power density and the specific point energy, whilst the weld width is controlled by the interaction time.

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