| Scope |
Steels remain the backbone of modern structural manufacturing due to their cost-effectiveness, versatility, and well-established qualification pathways. Across many steel applications, joint integrity has become a limiting factor — often more critical than base-metal capability. As industry targets higher efficiency and sustainability while reducing cost, scrap, and variability, advanced joining technologies are emerging as key enablers for thinner-gauge designs, improved reliability, and higher productivity.
To address these needs, this symposium focuses on three high-impact pillars for structural steel systems:
1. High-energy fusion joining: including advanced arc welding, laser and laser–arc hybrid welding, and electron beam (EB) welding.
2. Solid-state and resistance joining covering friction-based methods, ultrasonic metal welding, and spot/projection/seam/mash-seam resistance welding.
3. Brazing and metallurgical bonding: including induction, vacuum, controlled-atmosphere processes, diffusion bonding, and transient liquid phase (TLP) bonding.
A central challenge across these routes is controlling steel joint metallurgy — phase transformations, residual stress/distortion, and defect formation in the fusion zone and heat-affected zone (HAZ) — and linking these to service-relevant performance metrics including fatigue, cracking, leak integrity, and durability. Advanced characterization, computational/ICME modeling, and data-driven/AI methods serve as cross-cutting enablers that accelerate understanding, improve robustness, and support qualification. This symposium provides a venue for researchers, engineers, national laboratories, and industrial practitioners to share advances, exchange ideas, and build collaborations focused on process–microstructure–performance relationships and deployable joining solutions for structural steels.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
(1) High-energy fusion joining, including GMAW/GTAW/SAW (waveform-controlled variants), consumable/shielding innovations, laser/laser–arc hybrid welding, and EB welding, with emphasis on robustness and weld/HAZ metallurgy.
(2) Multi‑pass pulsed GMAW for structural steels, including thermal cycle control, interpass microstructure evolution, and weld/HAZ property optimization.
(3) Effects of post‑weld heat treatment (PWHT) on weld and HAZ microstructure, residual‑stress evolution, repair‑welding scenarios, and mechanical performance in structural steels, including cases where PWHT is mandated by service specifications.
(4) Functionally and compositionally graded alloy structures for mitigation of dissimilar‑metal weld challenges, including graded interlayers and performance under elevated‑temperature service conditions
(5) Resistance welding of steels (spot, projection, seam, and mash-seam), emphasizing process control, tolerance to manufacturing variation, and defect mitigation.
(6) Solid-state joining for steel and dissimilar systems, including friction-based methods and ultrasonic metal welding, with attention to interfacial mechanisms, property gradients, and joint integrity.
(7) Brazing and metallurgical bonding, including induction, vacuum, controlled atmosphere, and laser brazing, diffusion bonding, and TLP bonding, focusing on interfacial reactions and performance validation.
(8) Advanced characterization — EBSD, APT, residual stress measurement methods, and in-situ synchrotron/neutron techniques — to quantify joining metallurgy, defects, and damage mechanisms.
(9) Modeling and digital enablement (cross-cutting), including ICME prediction of phase transformations and HAZ evolution, residual stress/distortion, and defect formation, plus in-process sensing/inspection and AI-driven quality prediction and accelerated qualification. |