Because of the increasing use of thermoplastics and thermoplastic composites in load-bearing applications, welding methods are becoming important for part cost reduction. Welding requires the melting of the surfaces to be joined, followed by a solidification of the interfacial molten layers under pressure. Many welding techniques using different means for heating the joint interface are available. One such versatile technique is induction welding, in which the surfaces to be joined are brought to the "melting temperature" by induction heating a specially made gasket placed in the joint interface. Applications of this technique include welding of hot-water kettle housings and the welding of high-pressure water tanks. This process is not well understood. In this paper, tensile tests on induction butt-welds of amorphous and semicrystalline materials are used to characterize achievable weld strengths. Microscopy is used to correlate the strengths achieved with the morphology of the failure surface.
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