Effects of mass energy and line mass on clad characteristics in the laser cladding process

Laser cladding is an attractive technique that allows for the deposition of thin coating on substrate to improve the surface properties. The process parameters have great effects on the clad geometry characteristics. In this paper, the effects of the mass energy (the ratio of laser power to powder feed rate) and line mass (the ratio of powder feed rate to scanning speed) on the clad geometry characteristics (the clad height, width, depth, area and dilution) are investigated. Five values of mass energy and line mass are fixed and 35 different experiments have been made and analysed. The results reveal that the mass energy and line mass have an obvious effect on the clad geometry characteristics. The increase of the process parameters increases the clad height, width and depth at low parameter values; however, the clad geometric dimension tends to be kept constant, but decreases at high parameter values. The effects of mass energy and line mass on dilution show the same rules. The effect of mass energy and line mass on the ratio of the clad depth to height is obvious, but the effect is unnoticeable on the ratio of the clad width to height.