Benefits of Explosive Metal Welding

Design engineers often face the dilemma of material selection, and frequently, they discover that a combination of materials provides the optimal properties required by the design. Qnnect’s explosively bonded metals process can join otherwise incompatible materials without compromising other design elements.

Why Explosively Welded Metals

Materials may exhibit good corrosive resistance, electrical conductivity, or thermal conductivity, yet lack in the areas of strength, hardness, weld-ability, or wear resistance characteristics required in the final design. Qnnect has helped customers to achieve the “impossible” for more than 30 years with its innovative metal-to-ceramic, metal-to-composite, and explosively bonded metals solutions. Qnnect’s Explosive Bonding processes can join otherwise incompatible materials without compromising other critical elements of the design. These composite materials offer unique performance characteristics for a range of defense, space, medical, and commercial applications.

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Applications for Explosively Welded Metals

Precious Metal Conservation: Precious metals, refractory metals, and other expensive alloys can be explosively bonded, in thin layers, to the specific area of the designed part. This not only significantly reduces the cost of the manufactured part or material, but allows for the use of more structurally sound materials to be used where required.

Galvanic Corrosion Elimination: Explosively bonded dissimilar metals are a significant inhibitor to galvanic activity that would occur between mechanically fastened dissimilar metals. Maritime applications benefit from the use of explosively bonded metals by allowing for weldable transitions between dissimilar metals that also reduce or eliminate galvanic corrosion.

Corrosion Resistant Linings: The most common application of explosively bonded (or clad) metals, is as corrosive or erosive resistant linings of pressure vessels, chemical process tanks, heat exchangers, and tube sheets. Not only do users benefit from the corrosive lining, but also from significant cost reduction by being afforded the opportunity to utilize structural steels to improve wall strength without having to manufacture the entire structure out of the, typically expensive, corrosive resistant materials.

Bearing Surfaces: Similar to corrosive lining, bearing materials can be explosively bonded to sheets of metal. This allows for a structurally sound component to have a bearing surface clad directly to it, significantly reducing the wear of the part and improving its operation.

Radiation Shielding: Thin layers of shielding materials can be bonded to other structural metals or components. This has been a cost-effective method of providing radiation shielding to satellites.