Braze joints are unions between metals by a braze paste. This paste, usually having a melting point much lower than the base metals, is melted and then dried. This process acts like a metallic glue to fuse the base metals together. This project explores the strength of braze joint unions through conducting tensile and shear tests. There are many different ways of setting up braze joints; single lap, butt joint, double lap, scarf joints. The variables of this experiment include the setup of the specimens (within the single lap and butt joint configurations), the base materials (such as stainless steel 304 and stainless steel 316), and the overlap distance for the single lap joints. All our specimens used the same braze paste and process. This created a comprehensive design of experiments, which was formulated through Minitab’s factorial analysis. Through Minitab factorial analysis, relationships between these variables and joint strength were identified, while ANSYS modeling was employed to predict the performance of these joints. Our preliminary findings suggest that the strength of the braze joint is lower than the control base metals for all configurations.

Our team collaborated with Materials Science & Engineering 4 on this project.