Numerical Modelling of Electron Beam Welding of Pure Niobium with Beam Oscillation: Towards Industry 4.0

Electron beam welding (EBW) is a high-end manufacturing method often used in aerospace, defence and nuclear sectors. In order to explore the feasibility of upgrading the conventional EBW process to smarter and intelligent manufacturing towards Industry 4.0, this paper presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, where the e-beam characteristics are obtained through a state-of-the-art beam probing system, to simulate the electron beam welding of pure niobium plate with a circular beam deflection pattern. The effect of beam oscillation is studied based on the experiments and simulation results including weld bead shape, penetration, temperature distribution, keyhole generation, etc. It can be concluded that electron beam oscillation can reduce the maximum temperature of the molten pool and inhibit the generation of keyhole, therefore the weld seam quality is greatly improved compared with single path weld. The CFD model could be integrated into a digital toolbox for automating and better controlling the EBW process for a wider range of materials.