The paper presents an overview of the research done at the Romanian National R&D Institute for Welding and Material Testing ISIM Timisoara in the field of ultrasonic process development. It starts with a general presentation of the value added by the welding sector in Europe. There are presented figures representing the size of the welding sector in Romania. The need of development of new high efficiency welding processes is mentioned, ultrasonic welding being one of the special welding processes with exceptional application perspectives. Practical examples of industrial application of the ultrasonic welding process for joining plastic and metallic materials are presented. A special case study refers to the welding of new shape memory alloys. The use of the ultrasonic welding instead of an conventional welding process has lead in each presented case study to an increase of the efficiency of the welding process through higher productivity and saving of manpower, consumable, energy.
Ultrasonic welding; process development; metal welding; plastic welding; shape memory alloys welding; applications; efficiency
