Effect of Heat Input on Distortions and Residual Stresses Induced by Gas Tungsten Arc Welding in SS 316L to INCONEL625 Multipass Dissimilar Welded Joints

In the present study, distortion and residual stresses in the multipass welded joint were analyzed with respect to heat input. The welded joint was produced using the gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process with dissimilar Ni-based filler of ERNiCrMo-3. This dissimilar joint is essential in power generating nuclear and thermal plants operating at elevated temperatures. The distortion and residual stress measurements were taken using the Vernier height gauge and XRD method. To evaluate the mechanical properties, tensile testing was carried out at room temperature. The welded joint qualified the tensile test with an average value of 593 MPa. In the weld metal, a significant variation of residual stresses is measured on the top surface of the weldment along with the thickness with peak magnitude of 145 MPa to 180 MPa at the fusion zone.

Study on Microstructural Characterization, Mechanical Properties and Residual Stress of GTAW Dissimilar Joints of P91 and P22 Steels

This article deals with the dissimilar joining of two different grade Cr-Mo steel (2.25Cr-1Mo: P22 and modified 9Cr-1Mo: P91) for power plant application. The dissimilar butt-welded joint was produced for conventional V groove design by using the gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process with the application of an ERNiCrMo-3 Ni-based super alloy filler. A microstructure characterization was performed to measure the inhomogeneity in the microstructure and element diffusion across the interface in a welded joint. The experiments were also performed to evaluate the mechanical properties of the dissimilar welded joint in as-welded (AW) and post-weld heat treatment (PWHT) conditions. An acceptable level of the mechanical properties was obtained for the AW joint. After PWHT, a significant level of the element diffusion across the interface of the weld metal and P22 steel was observed, resulting in heterogeneity in microstructure near the interface, which was also supported by the hardness variation. Inhomogeneity in mechanical properties (impact strength and hardness) was measured across the weldments for the AW joint and was reduced after the PWHT. The tensile test results indicate an acceptable level of tensile properties for the welded joint in both AW and PWHT conditions and failure was noticed in the weak region of the P22 steel instead of the weld metal.

Study for Improvement in the Surface Properties and Wear Behavior of Mild Steel

Surface of a material can be improved by depositing the filler metal for the enhancement of various properties. Surface should be harder than substrate material for surface improvement. This surface improvement is also known as surfacing. In present research Mild steel specimens of size 140×35×40 were used to deposit surfacing layers and study the feasibility of iron/aluminum with varying compositions on low carbon steel deposited by GTAW process. Specimens for hardness and oxidation resistance were prepared. While studying oxidation of surfaced and un-coated area (base material), oxidation test resulted that the oxidation occurred on surface of base metal (un-coated area) after heating at different temperatures and time intervals. Specimens kept at 500˚C, 700˚C temperatures for 3, 6, 9 hours to get oxidized from un-coated surface but no mark of oxidation and pitting was visible at surfaced area but pitting of un-coated area occurred at 700˚C temperature. Oxidation had no effect to surfaced area. Low temperature oxidation test specimens gave only weight loss from un-coated portion but high temperature oxidation gave high amount of weight reduction due to pitting occurred on un-coated portion. The amount of weight loss of specimens increased with increase in furnace holding time at constant temperature. With increase in temperature oxidation of un-coated area of specimens also increased and pitting action occurred on un-coated area of specimens at high temperature. Further, for the various wear tests the cylindrical pins of 8 mm diameter with spherical tip 4 mm radius was made. Wear tests were carried out on pin on disc sliding wear testing machine. The comparison of wear rate loss was studied with constant sliding distance, varying load and sliding velocity of different compositions of iron/aluminum surfacing and substrate material. Hardness and wear resistance of composition were increased with increase in percentage of Fe element in composition. Composition C1 (Fe:Al/70:30) had high hardness and high wear resistance as compared to composition C2 (Fe:Al/30:70) and C3 (Fe:Al/50:50). Composition C3 (Fe:Al/50:50) had better hardness and wear resistance as compared composition C2 (Fe:Al/70:30). Keywords: Surface improvement, Fe-Al intermetallic, GTAW process, Sliding wear.

Thermal and Residual Stress Distributions in Inconel 625 Butt-Welded Plates: Simulation and Experimental Validation

Thermal and residual stress distributions induced by the gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process on Inconel 625 were studied using numerical simulation and experiments. A multi-pass welding model was developed that uses a volumetric heat source. Thermomechanical analysis is carried out to assess the Thermal and residual stress distributions. Experiments were carried out with 5 mm thick Inconel 625 plates. X-ray diffraction techniques were used to measure residual stresses, and IR thermometry was employed to capture the temperature values on the welded joints. Simulations were performed with ANSYS numerical code, and a close agreement was found between the predicted and experimentally measured residual stress. Thermal measurements were collected pass by pass from the analysis, and the agreement was 9.08%. The agreement between the measured and analysed residual stress was 11%.

Using a back propagation neutral network based modeling and heuristic algorithms based optimization technique in activated gas tungsten arc welding process

In this study, a modeling method based on an artificial neural networks model combined with a back propagation algorithm (BPNN) and an optimization procedure based on heuristic algorithms (particle swarm optimization (PSO) and simulated annealing (SA) algorithms) have been proposed for modeling and optimization of activated gas tungsten arc welding (A-GTAW) process in order to tackle the poor penetration drawback occurs during GTAW process. in this study effect of the most important process adjusting variables including welding current (C), welding speed (S)) and percentage of activating fluxes (TiO2 and SiO2) combination (F) on the most important quality characteristics (weld bead width (WBW), depth of penetration (DOP), and consequently aspect ratio (ASR)) in welding of AISI316L austenite stainless steel parts have been investigated. Box-behnken and central composite designs (BBD and CCD) based on response surface methodology (RSM) in design of experiments (DOE) method have been employed to gather the required data for modeling and optimization purposes. Then, BPNN has been used to determine the relations between A-GTAW process input variables and output responses. To determine the proper BPNN model architecture (the proper hidden layers’ number and their corresponding neurons/nodes in each layer) PSO algorithm has been used. Next, PSO and SA algorithms have been used to optimize the proposed BPNN model in such a way that desired AR, minimum WBW, and maximum DOP achieved. Finally, confirmation experimental tests have been conducted to evaluate the proposed procedure performance. Based on the results, the proposed method is efficient in modeling and optimization (less than 7% error) of A-GTAW process.