Experimental Investigation on Bead-on-Plate Welding and Cladding using Pulsed GTAW Process

Manufacturing industries intend superior quality production maintaining economy with improved productivity. Components used in engineering applications are desired to have high strength and corrosion resistance for long run reliable performance. Weld cladding is commonly employed on a corrosion prone material with a goal to achieve longer service life of the same. For doing weld cladding, obtaining favourable bead geometry is important, and heat input is expected to play a vital role. In this work, bead-on-plate experiments are first done on low carbon steel substrate using 316 austenitic stainless steel filler employing pulsed GTAW or TIG process. Three-variable Box-Behnken unblocked design of experiment of Response Surface Methodology is resorted to for setting experimental runs. Evaluating appropriate process parameters from this set of experiments, experimental conditions of cladding are set. Corrosion test shows that at 150A welding current, 33Hz welding pulse frequency and 150 mm/min torch travel speed with 0.594 kJ/mm heat input, corrosion rate becomes minimum, and therefore, this parametric combination may be recommended to adopt.