Vaporizing foil actuator welding as a competing technology to magnetic pulse welding

Photonic Doppler velocimetry was applied to compare magnetic pulse welding and vaporizing foil actuator welding against each other in the form of lap joints made of 5000 series aluminum alloy sheets under identical experimental conditions which are: charging energies of the pulse generator, specimen geometry, initial distances between flyer and target plate. Impact velocities resulting from rapidly vaporizing aluminum foils were up to three times higher than those of purely electromagnetically accelerated flyer plates. No magnetic pulse welds were achieved, while every vaporizing foil experiment yielded a strong weld in that failure always occurred in the joining partners instead of in the weld seam during tensile tests. An analytical model to calculate the transient flyer velocity is presented and compared to the measurements. The average deviation between model and experiment is about 11% with regard to the impact velocity. Hence, the model may be used for the process design of collision welds generated by vaporizing foil actuators.