Canadian Centre for Welding and Joining

The Canadian Centre for Welding and Joining (CCWJ) is one of the world’s largest university initiatives in welding with a global reputation reflected in multiple awards, such as the “Image of Welding Award” awarded by the American Welding Society as a leading education institution in 2013. The CCWJ’s $5 M facility houses all forms of arc welding, a 9 kW laser, and several robots. Diagnostic tools include high speed cameras, laser lighting, a specialized thermal camera, wavelength spectrometer, and data acquisition. Characterization capabilities include hardness mapping, surface profilometry, instrumented impact, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen testing, dilatometry, and metallography. Centralized facilities at the UofA also provide access to high end electron microscopy and composition analysis tools. Tools of analysis at the CCWJ include latest generation weld modeling software such as VRWeld, Simufact, and Transweld, and general purpose modeling software such as Comsol and Matlab. Materials properties software includes ThermoCalc and JMatPro.