Explosive Welding of Aluminium

Principle of Explosive Welding.  Shock waves (3,000 to 9,000 m/s) can produce pressures of up to 6 x 10⁶ N/cm². This energy is utilised for explosive welding, especially for plates with large areas. The shock waves spread out and create a “material wave” at the joining plane. At the collision point a thin jet of material is heated to a high temperature, causing melting and mechanical mixing at the interface. Aluminium can be effectively welded with itself and also with steel and copper giving composite joints.

Macrostructure of Explosive Welded Joints. The detonation force waves can be clearly seen as waves in a microsection. “Multiple explosive welding” can be used to join a number of materials of different thicknesses. Even here it is possible to join materials which cannot be joined by other processes.

The source:

TALAT Lecture 4300 – Beam Welding Processes of Aluminium / Ulrich Krüger – European Aluminium Association, 1994