Title: A study on characteristics of alternate supply of shielding gas in GTA welding using finite element analysis

Authors: Ill-Soo Kim, Joon Sik Son, Hak Hyoung Kim, Hee Jin Kim

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mokpo National University, Jeonnam 534-729, Korea. ' Technical Research Laboratories, ProMECS Co. Ltd., Pohang 790-330, Korea. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mokpo National University, Jeonnam, 534-729, Korea. ' Advanced Joining Technology Team, KITECH, Incheon 406-130, Korea

Abstract: Discrete alternate supply of shielding gas is a new technology that alternately supplies the different kinds of shielding gases in weld zone. In this study, welding characteristics under variation of alternate supply method of shielding gases in austenite stainless steel using a Gas Tungsten Arc welding process were been investigated and found the relationship between different types of shielding gas and bead geometry as a welding quality. 2-D axisymmetric heat and fluid mathematical model for weld pool was developed for verifying the effect of alternate supply of shielding gas. The developed model was solved using a general thermofluid-mechanics computer program, PHOEINCS code, based on SIMPLE algorithm. Results show that the developed computation model was very adequate to predict in the weld pool and bead geometry, the technique of alternate supply of shielding gas should be useful to increase higher productivity, cost savings and better quality in the GTA welding. [Received 30 March 2006; Accepted 5 March 2006]

Keywords: finite element analysis; FEA; GTA welding; shielding gas; thermofluid mechanics; bead geometry; austenite stainless steel; gas tungsten arc welding.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2007.016428

International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, 2007 Vol.1 No.3, pp.335 - 350

Published online: 28 Dec 2007 *

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