Methodology to Evaluate Fatigue Damage of High-Speed Train Welded Bogie Frames Based on On-Track Dynamic Stress Test Data

The current method of estimating the fatigue life of railway structures is to calculating the equivalent stress amplitude based on the measured stress data. However, the random of the measured data is not considered. In this paper, a new method was established to compute the equivalent stress amplitude to evaluate the fatigue damage based on the measurable randomness, since the equivalent stress is the key parameter for assessment of structure fatigue life and load derivation. The equivalent stress amplitude of a high-speed train welded bogie frame was found to obey normal distribution under uniform operation route that verified by on-track dynamic stress data, and the proposed model is, in effect, an improved version of the mathematical model used to calculate the equivalent stress amplitude. The data of a long-term, on-track dynamic stress test program was analyzed to find that the normal distribution parameters of equivalent stress amplitude values differ across different operation route. Thus, the fatigue damage of the high-speed train welded bogie frame can be evaluated by the proposed method if the running schedule of the train is known a priori. The results also showed that the equivalent stress amplitude of the region connected to the power system is more random than in other regions of the bogie frame.

Effect of welding current and speed on occurrence of humping bead in high-speed GMAW

The developed mathematical model of humping formation mechanism in high-speed gas metal arc welding （GMAW） is used to analyze the effects of welding current and welding speed on the occurrence of humping bead. It considers both the momentum and heat content of backward flowing molten jet inside weld pool. Three-dimensional geometry of weld pool, the spacing between two adjacent humps and hump height along humping weld bead are calculated under different levels of welding current and welding speed. It shows that wire feeding rate, power intensity and the moment of backward flowing molten jet are the major factors on humping bead formation.

Analysis of droplet transfer of pulsed MIG welding based on electrical signal and high-speed photography

In order to study how welding parameters affect welding quality and droplet transfer, a synchronous acquisition and analysis system is established to acquire and analyze electrical signal and instantaneous images of droplet transfer simultaneously, which is based on a self-developed soft-switching inverter. On the one hand, welding current and voltage signals are acquired and analyzed by a self-developed dynamic wavelet analyzer. On the other hand, images are filtered and optimized after they are captured by high-speed camera. The results show that instantaneous waveforms and statistical data of electrical signal contribute to make an overall assessment of welding quality, and that optimized high-speed images allow a visual and clear observation of droplet transfer process. The analysis of both waveforms and images leads to a further research on droplet transfer mechanism and provides a basis for precise control of droplet transfer.

Influence of high frequency vibration on microstructure and mechanical properties of TIG welding joints of AZ31 magnesium alloy

A device for superimposing vibration on workpiece in both horizontal and vertical directions during tungsten-arc inert gas （TIG） welding was developed, with maximum power output of 2 kW at frequency of 15 kHz. AZ31 sheets with thickness of I and 3 mm were used in the vibratory welding. Microstructures along with the mechanical properties of the weld joints under different vibrating conditions （vibration direction, vibration amplitude and groove angle） were examined. It is observed that the grain size in welding zone decreases remarkably with the application of vibration, while the amount of second phase β-Mg_17Al_12 within the zone decreases slightly; meanwhile, microhardness of the weld joints, macroscopic tensile strength and elongation of the weldment increase. Vibration, especially the one along vertical direction, has more impact on the performance of the thick weldments. Influence of vibration on mierostructure and mechanical properties of weldments is affected by wave energy transferring in the melt and depends on the processing and geometric parameters including amplitude and direction of vibration, thickness, and groove angles.

Detection of butt weld of laser-MIG hybrid welding of thin-walled profile for high-speed train

Purpose–This study aims to solve the problem of weld quality inspection,for the aluminum alloy profile welding structure of high-speed train body has complex internal shape and thin plate thickness(2–4 mm),the conventional nondestructive testing method of weld quality is difficult to implement.Design/methodology/approach–In order to solve this problem,the ultrasonic creeping wave detection technology was proposed.The impact of the profile structure on the creeping wave detection was studied by designing profile structural test blocks and artificial simulation defect test blocks.The detection technology was used to test the actual welded test blocks,and compared with the results of X-ray test and destructive test(tensile test)to verify the accuracy of the ultrasonic creeping wave test results.Findings–It is indicated that that X-ray has better effect on the inspection of porosities and incomplete penetration defects.However,due to special detection method and protection,the detection speed is slow,which cannot meet the requirements of field inspection of the welding structure of aluminum alloy thin-walled profile for high-speed train body.It can be used as an auxiliary detection method for a small number of sampling inspection.The ultrasonic creeping wave can be used to detect the incomplete penetration welds with the equivalent of 0.25 mm or more,the results of creeping wave detection correspond well with the actual incomplete penetration defects.Originality/value–The results show that creeping wave detection results correspond well with the actual non-penetration defects and can be used for welding quality inspection of aluminum alloy thin-wall profile composite welding joints.It is recommended to use the echo amplitude of the 10 mm 30.2 mm 30.5 mm notch as the criterion for weld qualification.

Microstructure and mechanical properties of Mg-Li alloy after TIG welding

Tungsten inert gas weld was carried out on super-light magnesium-lithium alloy plates with a thickness of 2 mm, using argon gas as a protecting atmosphere. The microstructure and mechanical properties of the welded joints were investigated. The results indicate that the microstructure in the fusion zone is fine, and the microstructure in the heat-affected zone is coarser than the parent metal. The tensile strength of the welded joint is about 84% that of the parent metal. The fracture occurs in a mixed type of toughness and brittleness in the heat-affected zone. During the welding process, aluminum and cerium are enriched at grain boundaries in the fusion zone.

Microstructure and porosity analysis in ultrasonic assisted TIG welding of 2014 aluminum alloy

The ultrasonic assisted tungsten inert gas （U-TIG） welding is a newly developed arc welding method, which is aimed at improving the weld quality and efficiency. TIG welding and U-TIG welding of 2014 aluminum alloy with 5 mm thickness were experimentally carried out in this paper. The microstructure and porosity of welded joints were analyzed. Compared with conventional TIG welding, the columnar crystals are changed into equiaxed crystals at the centre of weld zone and the grain of fusion zone in U-TIG welding is refined and equiaxed. The porosities of joint decrease after the ultrasonic was applied on the arc. The mechanism of crystal grain refinement is discussed in this paper and the reasons of porosity decrease in U-TIG welded joint may be due to the effect of acoustic streaming and cavitation, which need further research.

Longitudinal forces of continuously welded track on high-speed railway cable-stayed bridge considering impact of adjacent bridges

A proven beam-track contact model was used to analyze the track-structure interaction of CWR (continuously welded track) on bridge. Considering the impact of adjacent bridges, the tower-cable-track-beam-pier-pile finite element model of the cable-stayed bridge was established. Taking a bridge group including 40-32m simply-supported beam and (32+80+112)m single-tower cable-stayed bridge and 17-32m simply-supported beam on the Kunming-Shanghai high-speed railway as an example, the characteristics of CWR longitudinal force on the cable-stayed bridge were studied. It is shown that adjacent bridges must be considered in the calculation of the track expansion force and bending force on cable-stayed bridge. When the span amount of adjacent bridges is too numerous, it can be simplified as six spans; the fixed bearing of adjacent simply-supported beams should be placed on the side near the cable-stayed bridge; the track expansion device should be set at the bridge tower to reduce the track force near the bridge abutment.

The element transfer behavior of gas pool coupled activating TIG welding

This paper deals with a novel dual shield TIG welding method named gas pool coupled activating TIG( GPCA-TIG)welding. The welding method divides the shielding gas into two layers. Inert gas such as Ar is adopted as the inner layer gas to protect the tungsten electrode and the molten pool metal. Pure O_2,N_2 or mixture of them are used as the outer layer gas to increase the weld penetration and improve the low temperature toughness of weld metal. Through analyzing the interaction between outer gas and arc and the distributions and existing forms of oxygen and nitrogen elements,the transfer behaviors of nitrogen and oxygen from arc to pool were investigated. The results show that,the interaction between the outer gas and arc plasma makes the arc slightly constrict. The incoming oxygen enriches on the molten pool surface and exists in the form of iron oxide,chromium oxide,manganese oxide and silicon oxygen compounds. The incoming nitrogen evenly distributes in the molten pool and exists in the form of nitrogen atom.

Numerical simulation of temperature fields for T-joint during TIG welding of titanium alloy

Three-dimensional finite element model was established to simulate temperature fields of T-joint titanium sheets during TIG welding with finite element method （FEM） software. Temperature dependent material properties and the effect of latent heat were considered. A technique of element birth and death was used to simulate the process of welded metal filling. Dynamic variation process of temperature fields during T1G welding was achieved. The simulated results agreed well with the measured results.

Characteristics of AZ31 Mg alloy joint using automatic TIG welding

The automatic tungsten-inert gas welding（ATIGW） of AZ31 Mg alloys was performed using a six-axis robot. The evolution of the microstructure and texture of the AZ31 auto-welded joints was studied by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and electron backscatter diffraction. The ATIGW process resulted in coarse recrystallized grains in the heat affected zone（HAZ） and epitaxial growth of columnar grains in the fusion zone（FZ）. Substantial changes of texture between the base material（BM） and the FZ were detected. The {0002} basal plane in the BM was largely parallel to the sheet rolling plane, whereas the c-axis of the crystal lattice in the FZ inclined approximately 25° with respect to the welding direction. The maximum pole density increased from 9.45 in the BM to 12.9 in the FZ. The microhardness distribution, tensile properties, and fracture features of the AZ31 auto-welded joints were also investigated.

Vision-based detection of weld pool width in TIG welding of copper-clad aluminum cable

In order to realize automatic control of the width of weld pool, a visual sensor system for the width of weld pool detection is developed. By initiative arc light, the image of copper plate weld pool is taken back of the torch through the process of weakening and filtering arc light. In order to decrease the time of processing video signals, analog circuit is applied in the processing where video signals is magnified, trimmed and processed into binary on the datum of dynamic average value, therefore the waveform of video signals of weld pool is obtained. The method that is used for detecting the width of weld pool is established. Results show that the vision sensing method for real-time detecting weld pool width to copper-clad aluminum wire TIG welding is feasible. The response cycle of this system is no more than 50 ms, and the testing precision is less than 0. 1 mm.

Realizing precision pulse TIG welding with arc length control and visual image sensing based weld detection

Methods of arc length control and visual image based weld detection for precision pulse TIG welding were investigated. With a particular all hardware circuit, arc voltage during peak current stage is sampled and integrated to indicate arc length, deviation of arc length and adjusting parameters are calculated and output to drive a step motor directly. According to the features of welding image grabbed with CCD camera, a special algorithm was developed to detect the central line of weld fast and accurately. Then an application system were established, whose static arc length error is ±0.1 mm with 20 A average current and 1 mm given arc length, static detection precision of weld is 0.01 mm , processing time of each image is less than 120 ms . Precision pulse TIG welding of some given thin stainless steel components with complicated curved surface was successfully realized.

Numerical analysis for weld pool of pulsed TIG welding

A two-dimensional axisymmetric mathematical model of weld pool of pulsed TIG welding was established. Numerical simulation for weld pool of pulsed TIG welding was done using FLUENT software by selecting the appropriate boundary conditions and strongly coupled control equations. The distributions of temperature field and flow field of weld pool under the periodic change of welding current were obtained. According to the maximum temperature of upper and lower surface of workpiece and depth and width of weld pool, the distributions of temperature field and flow field under different pulsed frequencies and current duty cycles were obtained and periodic variation was analyzed under pulsed current. The analysis results show that with the increase of pulsed frequency, weld pool width increases slightly while depth decreases slightly, and with the increase of current duty cycle, the width and depth of weld pool both increase significantly, and the depth increases greatly.

Effect of preheat on TIG welding of AZ61 magnesium alloy

The effects of preheat treatments on the microstructures and mechanical properties of tungsten inert gas （TIG）-welded AZ61 magnesium alloy joints were studied by microstructural observations, microhardness tests and tensile tests. The results showed that the vol- ume fraction of the lamellar β-Mg17（Al,Zn）12 intermetallic compound of in fusion zone （FZ） increased from 15% to 66% with an increase in preheat temperature. Moreover, the microhardness of the FZ and the ultimate tensile strength of the welded joints reached their maximum values when the preheat temperature was 300℃ because more lamellar β-Mg17（Al,Zn）12 intermetallic compounds were distributed at the α-Mg grain boundaries and no cracks and pores formed in the FZ of the welded joint.

A study on twin-tungsten TIG welding method

A new twin-tungsten TIG （T-TIG） welding method was studied. This method differs from the conventional TIG method, it places two electrodes insulated from each other in the same welding torch, and a coupling arc is generated from the two electrodes. The coupling arc pressure was measured and preliminary welding experiment was made. The results show that the coupling arc can keep arc pressure at a low level compared with conventional TIG arc, and welding can be achieved under higher current and high travel speed with sound appearance of weld. Therefore, this new method can applied widely in high effwiency welding.

Research on the Mechanism of Penetration Increase by Flux in A-TIG Welding

The mechanism of penetration depth increased by activating flux in activating tungsten inert gas(A-TIG)weldingwas studied by measuring the distribution of trace element Bi in the weld and monitoring the change of arc voltageduring A-TIG welding of stainless steel 0Crl8Ni9 with fluxes SiO_(2)and TiO_(2).The results show that the mechanismof penetration depth in A-TIG welding depends on the sort of flux used.The weld pool convection after coating theflux SiO_(2)and flux TiO_(2)is changed inversely compared with convectional TIG welding without flux.The arc voltageis increased by flux SiO_(2)whilst flux TiO_(2)does not have effect on the arc voltage.The reason of penetration depthincrease for SiO_(2)is due to the constriction of arc plasma and the change of surface tension gradient.The increaseof weld penetration depth with TiO_(2)only ascribes to the change of surface tension gradient.

Research for the method of image acquisition of the molten pool in the TIG welding of aluminum alloy

Obtaining the image of molten pool aluminum alloy’s tungsten inert gas(TIG)welding becomes a challenging problem in the welding field. In this paper, a bran-new optical sensor based analyzing the light spectrum was designed, and the clear image of the molten pool during the aluminum alloy’s welding using the common industrial CCD camera was obtained. And with the new algorithm provided by myself, the desirable characteristic parameters of the molten pool of aluminum alloy’s welding were obtained, and it provides a good base for advanced monitor welding quality.

Damage Tolerance Assessment of a Brake Unit Bracket for High-Speed Railway Welded Bogie Frames

The brake unit bracket of a bogie frame is an important load-carrying component, particularly under emergency start/stop conditions. Conventional infinite/safe life approaches provide an over-conservative recommendation for the allowable strength and lifetime, which hinders the lightweight design of modern railway vehicles. In this study, to ensure the reliability and durability of a brake unit bracket, an attempt was made to integrate the nominal stress method and an advanced damage tolerance method. First, a complex bogie frame was modelled using solid elements instead of plate and beam elements. A hot spot stress region on the bracket was found under an eight-stage load spectrum obtained from the Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway line. Based on the probability of foreign damage, a semi-elliptical surface crack was then assumed for residual life assessment. The results obtained by the cumulative damage and damage tolerance methods show that the brake unit bracket can operate for over 30 years. Moreover, even if a 2-mm depth crack exists, the brake unit bracket can be safely operated for more than 2.27 years, with the hope that the crack can be detected in subsequent maintenance procedures. Finally, an appropriate safety margin was suggested which provides a basis for the life prediction and durability assessment of brake unit brackets of high-speed railways.

Microstructure and property research on welded joints of 7xxx aluminum alloy welding wire TIG for 7075 aluminum alloy

7 xxx welding wire was self-made by spray forming ingots drawn to series welding wires products,and then TIG butt welding test is used for 5 mm thick 7075 high-strength aluminium alloy.After welding,the stress relief+solid-solution aging heat treatment(T6)were performed to joints,and the mechanical properties and microstructure of the joints before and after heat treatment were comparative analyzed.The results show that the properties of the heat-affected zone(HAZ)of the joint before heat treatment decreas,and the joint is softened.The welded joints tensile strength is 271.8 MPa,the elongation is 5.6%,and the average hardness of the weld is 118.4 HV.The second phase particles such asη(Mg Zn2),S(Al2 Cu Mg),Al13 Fe4 are distributed in a network layer,with no apparent element segregation.After heat treatment,the structure of each area of the joint is coarsened,and a small amount of Fe-containing impurity phases are distributed.Theηand S phases are dissolved in the matrix.The hardness of each area of the joint is increased to 155 HV,and the softening zone is disappeared,this leads the joint elongation close to 16.9%.The tensile strength is increased to 511.8 MPa,reaching 94%of the base metal tensile strength.