Sharif Digital Repository

Efficient control of a gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process enables one to obtain high quality products as a consequence of achieving a high quality weld. Although control of the droplet detachment frequency in the welding process would play a great role in improving the welding quality, measuring this variable is difficult and expensive. In this paper, we attempt to control the frequency of droplet detachments without directly measuring it. To this end, we utilize the hybrid property of the GMAW process to indirectly control the frequency. Specifically, a mixed logical dynamical (MLD) model is obtained by considering the hybrid act of the process during droplet detachment. Then, a nonlinear... 

Gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process was used to weld plates of strain-hardened Al-6.7Mg alloy. It was observed that HAZ softening issue occurred extensively for the current material using the GMAW process. So, as a solution, pulsed current was employed and the plates were welded by pulsed GMAW (PGMAW) process. The effects of peak current (93, 120, 140, and 160 A) and pulse frequency (0.5, 2.0, and 5.0 Hz) on the strength of the weldments were investigated. For high peak currents (160 A), catastrophic defects were formed in the weld metal. It was observed that for the lowest pulse frequency (0.5 Hz), increasing the peak current increased the weld strength. The peak current did not change the... 

In this paper, we present a method to dynamically observe two important variables of a Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process, i.e. arc voltage and arc length. To do this, we use Kalman filter to estimate these two variables in a high level noisy environment of GMAW process both in open and closed loop modes  

Welding is an important manufacturing process that can be automated and optimized. This paper focuses on the development of a robotic arc welding system, wherein a three-degree-of-freedom Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) is interfaced to a Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process. The entire system is composed of a robot linked to a GMAW system. Set points are derived using the desired mass and heat input, along with the weld speed. The stick-out and the current of the welding process are controlled using an Adaptive Neural Network Controller (ANNC). The trajectory of the robot or the weld profile is also controlled by implementing a Mixed Fuzzy-GA Controller (MFGAC) on a... 

The heat affected zone (HAZ) softening behavior of strain-hardened Al-6.7Mg alloy welded by gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process was investigated. Increasing the heat input during welding led to formation of a wider HAZ. Moreover, the size of the precipitates was increased at higher heat inputs. Consequently, by increasing the heat input, lower strength was obtained for the welding joints. At the second stage of the study, pulsed-GTAW (PGTAW) process was employed to improve the strength of the joints. It was observed that the overall strength of the welding joints was improved and the fracture during tensile test was moved from the HAZ to the fusion zone. Moreover, the effect of duration... 

Efficient control of gas metal arc welding process enables us to have high quality products in consequence of achieving high quality weld. In this paper, an extended dynamic matrix controller is designed and applied on the gas metal arc welding process, which is considered as a nonlinear multi-inputs multi-outputs system. In order to reach a high quality weld, the outputs, welding current and arc length, are effectively controlled by open circuit voltage and wire feed speed. The structure and performance of the proposed controller are discussed in detail, and then a set of simulation results is presented to verify its efficiencies  

Welding is an important manufacturing process that can be automated and optimized. In this paper we discuss the Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) control and modeling problem. For modeling the process recently developed highly nonlinear fifth order mathematical model is used, for controlling the GMAW process we use a new Mixed Fuzzy Control (MFC) structure. In this work first a Traditional Fuzzy Controller (TFC) is designed from the viewpoint of a Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) system for controlling each state of GMAW process. Then, an appropriate coupling fuzzy controller is also designed according to the characteristics of gas metal arc welding process and incorporated into a TFC. We then... 

In this work, examinations on the microstructure and mechanical properties of plain carbon steel and AISI 430 ferritic stainless steel dissimilar welds are carried out. Welding is conducted in both autogenous and using ER309L austenitic filler rod conditions through gas tungsten arc welding process. The results indicate that fully-ferritic and duplex ferritic-martensitic microstructures are formed for autogenous and filler-added welds, respectively. Carbide precipitation and formation of martensite at ferrite grain boundaries (intergranular martensite) as well as grain growth occur in the heat affected zone (HAZ) of AISI 430 steel. It is found that weld heat input can strongly affect grain... 

Wrought aluminum sheets with thickness of 13. mm were square butt-welded by friction stir welding (FSW) and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) methods. Corrosion behavior of the welding zone was probed by Tafel polarization curve. Optical metallography (OM) and scanning electron microscopy together with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) were used to determine morphology and semi-quantitative analysis of the welded zone. FSW resulted in equiaxed grains of about 1-2 μm, while GTAW caused dendritic structure of the welded region. Resistance to corrosion was greater for the FSW grains than the GTAW structure. In both cases, susceptibility to corrosion attack was greater in the welded region... 

It is proposed to employ melting rate, heat input, and detaching droplet diameter as controlled variables to control heat and mass transfer to work piece in a gas metal arc welding process. A two-layer architecture with cascade configuration of PI and MPC controllers is implemented to incorporate existing constraints on the process variables, improve transient behavior of the closed-loop responses and reduce interaction level. Computer simulation results are presented to indicate usefulness of the proposed controlled variables selection and applying two-layer control architecture to control heat and mass transfer to work piece  

This study concentrates on the effects of weld sequence and welding fixtures on distribution and magnitude of induced arc welding residual stresses built up in butt-joint of Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) AA5251 plates. Aluminum plates have been welded under different welding conditions and then, longitudinal and transverse residual stresses were measured in different points of the welded plates employing hole-drilling technique. The results indicate that welding sequence significantly alters the distributions of both longitudinal and transverse residual stresses while the changing in the weld sequence leads to 44% decrease in longitudinal residual stress. Besides, both the geometry of weld... 

In this paper, a thermo-mechanical model has been used to predict the temperature history and residual stress distribution in gas tungsten arc welding of AA5251 plates. This model has also been utilized to estimate the residual stresses under different welding sequences, while in the model the effect of temperature on material properties were taken into account. In order to verify the predictions, residual stresses within the welded samples and weld pool geometry were experimentally measured employing hole drilling and macro-examination of weld cross-section, respectively. The comparison between numerical and experimental data shows a reasonable agreement. The predictions show that the... 

The purpose of this work is to assess the effect of welding fixtures on distributions and values of residual stresses during Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW). The butt-joint GTAW of AA5251 plate is investigated using a transient thermo-mechanical analysis performed by the finite element program, ABAQUS. The model considers two different welding conditions including unconstrained and perfectly constrained conditions while macro examination and residual stress measurements by implementing hole drilling techniques are utilized to evaluate the predictions. The results show that the utilizing of a welding fixture alters the temperature field within the plate being welded and the depth of the weld... 

Two different types of welds, Metal Inert Gas (MIG) and Friction Stir Welding (FSW), have been used to weld aluminum alloy 5083. The microstructure of the welds, including the nugget zone and heat affected zone, has been compared in these two methods using optical microscopy. The mechanical properties of the weld have been also investigated using the hardness and tensile tests. The results show that both the methods could successfully be used to weld such alloy. The strength of the joints is comparable to the strength of the base metal in both cases. However, FSWed samples have shown higher strength in comparison to the MIG samples. The results also show that the extension of the heat... 

A three-dimensional model is utilized to predict temperature distribution and fluid flow during the process of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW). In order to evaluate the effect of the heat flux model on the accuracy of predictions, two types of heat sources - with different natures based on Gaussian surface heat flux and volumetric Goldak's double-ellipsoid heat flux distributions - are taken into account. These heat flux schemes are input into a model simulation of GTAW of AA1050. In the next stage, the transient temperature distribution within the metal being welded is predicted for each heat flux model using FLUENT computational fluid dynamics software. The fusion and heat-affected zones... 

In the present research, weld pool geometry, thermal cycle, temperature and velocity fields during gas tungsten arc welding of aluminum alloys were predicted by solving three-dimensional equations of conservation of mass, energy and momentum under steady-state conditions. Welding experiments were then conducted on several samples with different thicknesses and chemical compositions. The geometries of the weld pools as well as the thermal cycles were measured. It is found that the calculated geometry of the weld fusion zone and the weld thermal cycles are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental results. In addition, the magnitude of the maximum velocities under different... 

An adaptive extended Kalman filter is designed to estimate the arc length in a gas metal arc welding system. The simulation results show that the estimated variables track the true variables of the non-linear model with negligible error and are robust against parameters uncertainties. The proposed estimator also operates adequately in a highly noisy welding environment. Because of the low computational requirements and little lag produced in the process dynamic, use of the proposed estimator would be valuable in the design of a controller for the gas metal arc welding system