AccScience Publishing / ESAM / Volume 2 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.36922/ESAM026110005
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Effects of laser-textured patterns on the mechanical strength and interfacial stress of additively manufactured carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic/aluminum alloy joints

Qige Li 1,2 ,  Jianhui Su1,2 ,  Caiwang Tan1,2* ,  Cunlin Qin3 ,  Xiaohui Han4 ,  Cong Wang4 ,  Xiaohui Zhang4 ,  Gengxiang Yang5 ,  Bo Chen1,2 ,  Xiaoguo Song1,2
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1 State Key Laboratory of Precision Welding & Joining of Materials and Structures, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
2 Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Special Welding Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai Campus), Weihai, Shandong, China
3 School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai, Shandong, China
4 CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., Ltd., Qingdao, Shandong, China
5 Composites Product Division, Beijing Satellite Manufacturing Factory, Beijing, China
ESAM 2026, 2(2), 026110005 https://doi.org/10.36922/ESAM026110005
Received: 13 March 2026 | Revised: 8 April 2026 | Accepted: 14 April 2026 | Published online: 28 May 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

As high-end manufacturing evolves toward lightweight, high-performance designs, integrated manufacturing technologies for heterogeneous materials have become critical in industries such as rail transportation and aerospace. However, the substantial differences between heterogeneous materials make it difficult to achieve reliable interfacial bonding during manufacturing. In this study, fused deposition modeling technology was used to directly print carbon fiber reinforced polyamide 6 (CF-PA6) filaments onto the surface of 6061 aluminum alloy, enabling the integrated fabrication of aluminum alloy/CF-PA6 composite structures. The influence of microstructure morphology on the joint was investigated. Grid-like and cross-shaped microstructures with identical surface areas were fabricated on the aluminum alloy surface by using a nanosecond pulsed laser. Furthermore, the cross-shaped microstructures were rotated at different angles to examine the effect of orientation on joint performance. Finite-element stress-field simulations were conducted to analyze and elucidate how microstructural design modulates fracture mechanisms in joints. The results show that the microstructures significantly increase the effective bonding area and enhance joint strength. Compared to the grid-like microstructure, the cross-shaped microstructure effectively inhibits crack propagation by reducing stress transfer between adjacent microstructural units. Rotating the cross-shaped microstructures provides additional control over stress transmission paths, leading to more uniform load distribution and consequently lower interfacial stresses. The joint with the cross-shaped microstructure rotated at 15° had the highest tensile-shear load of 2,635 N (corresponding to a tensile-shear strength of 6.6 MPa), representing a 198% improvement over the untreated state.

Keywords
Additive manufacturing
Laser texturing
6061 aluminum/carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic
Mechanical interlocking
Interfacial stress
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52475332) and the Open Projects Fund of Shanghai Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacture of Thin-walled Structure (Grant No. 202502).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.c
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Engineering Science in Additive Manufacturing, Electronic ISSN: 3082-849X Published by AccScience Publishing
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