Title: Enhancement of weld penetration in 2205 stainless steel by TIG welding novel variants

Authors: Dipali Pandya; Amarish Badgujar; Mohamed Rafik Noor Mohamed Qureshi; Nilesh D. Ghetiya

Addresses: School of Engineering and Technology, Navrachana University, Vadodara 391410, Gujarat, India ' School of Engineering and Technology, Navrachana University, Vadodara 391410, Gujarat, India ' Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

Abstract: The study compares the effects of welding joints made in 2205 duplex stainless steel with activated tungsten inert gas (A-TIG), flux-bounded TIG (FB-TIG) and flux-zone TIG (FZ-TIG). To examine the effects of activated fluxes welded by the A-TIG and FB-TIG welding procedures, four single component oxide fluxes (Cr₂O₃, MoO₃, SiO₂ and TiO₂) are chosen. The highest penetration is achieved with SiO₂ flux among all selected activated fluxes in A-TIG as well as in FB-TIG welds. FZ-TIG welding is performed with eight unique combinations of selected oxide fluxes. The maximum penetration is achieved in FZ-TIG welding with SiO₂ as the centre region flux and Cr₂O₃ as the side region flux. The robust arc constriction and reversal Marangoni convection lead to higher penetration. The microstructure study shows that A-TIG and FZ-TIG weld joints form a more balanced structure of ferrite/austenite by forming larger laths of Widmanstätten austenite in ferrite matrix compare to FB-TIG weld joint. A lesser reduction in electrode diameter and appreciable weld bead appearance is detected in the FB-TIG weld compared to the other two processes.

Keywords: activated tungsten inert gas; A-TIG; flux-zone tungsten inert gas; FZ-TIG; flux-bounded tungsten inert gas; FB-TIG; weld bead geometry; Marangoni convection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2024.140193

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2024 Vol.15 No.3, pp.185 - 199

Received: 27 Jun 2022
Accepted: 11 Aug 2022
Published online: 29 Jul 2024 *

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