Effect of Conventional and Pulsed TIG Welding on Microstructural and Mechanical Characteristics of AA 6082-T6 Repair Welds

Repair welding of AA 6082-T6 joints was carried out using ER 4043 filler through the TIG welding process with or without pulsed current.Microstructure and mechanical characteristics of the joints before and after repairing were investigated by examining macrostructure,microstructure,and distributions of porosity in the weld metal(WM),and by hardness,tensile,and bending tests.We observed that the welding current,phase transformations in heat-affected zone(HAZ)and porosity introduced in the WM during welding influence on its mechanical properties in sequence.The experimental results showed that the bead width and penetration as well as size of pores in the joints were mainly influenced by the welding currents.The sound joints were obtained at a welding current of 140 A with or without pulsed current when welding speed and gas flow rate were set at 20 cm·min-1 and 15 L·min-1,respectively.Among them,the decrease in mechanical properties of repair weld(RW)was directly related to the phase transformations in the over-ageing zone due to the double welding thermal cycles and elevated distribution of porosity in the WM.In addition,it was observed that the comparatively smaller grain size and lower porosity in WM of the RW produced by pulsed TIG welding gave a positive effect on its mechanical properties.

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.

Modeling transient fluid flow and heat transfer phenothena in stationary pulsed current TIG weld pool

A mathematical model is presented to describe transient behavior of heat transfer and fluid flow in stationary pulsed current tungsten inert gas (PC-TIG) weld pool, which considers three kinds of driving, forces for weld pool convection, i,e. buoyancyforce, electromagnetic force and surface tension force. furthermore. the effect of vaporization heat flux at the free surface of weld pool and the temperature coefficient of surface tenston which is a function of temperatuer and composition are considered in the model In order to accelerate the convergence of iteration the AST(additive source term)method which concerns with the thermal energv boundary conditions is extended successfully to deal with the momentum boundary conditions by which the transient momentum equation and energy equation are mutually coupled. At the same time. ADI (Alternating direction implicit) method and DBC (double blocks correction) technque are employed to solve the finite difference equations. The results of numerical simulation demonstrate the transient behavior of PC-TIG weld pool, as well as the periodic variation of fluid flow and heat transfer with the periodic variation of welding current in stationary PC-TIG weld pool. The theoretical predictions based on this model are, shown to be in good accordance with the experimental measurements.

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.

Mathematical model and simulation of partial penetrated weld pool

The qualitative analysis on the behavior of partial penetrated weld pool transferring from pulsed peak current to base current in pulsed TIG welding is carried out in this paper. Based on the analysis results, the mathematical models for 3D liquid surface shape of partial penetrated weld pool in pulsed TIG welding are created including surface potential energy model, gravitational energy model and volumetric potential energy. The numerical simulation with these models and the experiments on low carbon steel are carried out using the software Surface Evolver. The simulation results and model are then amended with experimental results. Two important characteristic quantities, the liquid metal coverage ratio and the stripping width of liquid metal, are put forward in this paper, which paves a way for further weld pool full penetration control.