This paper gives an historic overview and new developments of research activities in
the field of the oscillatory behaviour of liquid metal in arc welding.
Early work focused on the oscillation behaviour of the weld pool in Gas Tungsten Arc Welding
(GTAW). Agitated weld pools exhibit specific modes of oscillation, the frequency of which can
be measured from the arc voltage data and is conditioned by the geometry of the weld pool and
the properties of the liquid metal. Of technological interest is the alteration of the oscillation
behaviour for partially and fully penetrated situations, which can be used for penetration control
during welding.
A logical extension of the research activities was related to the influence of filler wire addition
on the oscillation behaviour. An intermediate step towards the description of Gas Metal Arc
Welding (GMAW), is the situation of GTAW with cold filler wire supply. It was found that both
the liquid weld pool and the pendant liquid droplet at the tip of the filler wire experience an
oscillation, which obscures the influence of the individual contributions of both liquid masses on
the voltage data. It was shown that online penetration control is still possible, provided that the
metal is transferred in an uninterrupted way, i.e. the filler wire flows smoothly into the weld
pool.
For GMAW, in which detached droplets collide with the weld pool surface, the difficulties are
even more prominent. Recent work is related to this issue. Monitoring of the phenomena
occurring at the weld pool and the pendant droplet become problematic by means of the voltage
data. Observations by means of high-speed video imaging will be discussed.
Apart from the experimental studies, efforts are undertaken in numerical simulations of the
processes. A good correlation is obtained between experimental data and the results of the
numerical models.