Fusion welding process to join aluminum and titanium

Abstract

The invention concerns a process for joining a first member (1) comprising an aluminum alloy to a second member (2) comprising a titanium alloy and having at least one edge with a thickness e, comprising the steps of (i) chamfering said edge of said second member into a tapered truncated shape having on a first side a first tapering angle α1, on a second side a second tapering angle α2 and a minimum thickness t, wherein α1 and α2 are greater than or equal to zero, the sum of α1 and α2 is between 10° and 50° and t is between 0.05 e and 0.3 e, (ii) placing said first member and said chamfered edge of said second member (21) in an abutting relationship defining a geometry to be weld-brazed (3), (iii) heating the surface areas of said members adjacent the abutment to a temperature above the melting temperature of said aluminum alloy and below the melting temperature of said titanium alloy, in the presence of an inert gas (5) and of a filler metal (4) to obtain a weld-brazed joint. The process of the invention is particularly useful for obtaining high strength weld-brazed joints between aluminum and titanium with a high process output.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.