Enhancement of weld quality with the aid of weld backing in SS304L Metal inert gas weldment

Abstract

The aim of this investigation is to improve the quality of the newlineweldment by reducing the defects in the MIG welded joint. MIG welding is newlinetaken into consideration as it finds its application in a wide range, making it newlineavailable both commercially and economically. Moreover in this study newlineSS304L is opted as the base metal for the weldment study as it is more newlinecommonly used material since it has dominant properties like corrosive newlineresistant, weldability, durability, etc. which finds its application in boiler newlineunits, chemical plants, pipelines so forth and so no. Hence this combination of newlineMIG welding process and SS304L base material is considered for the study. newlineThe study of defects helps in sorting out the cause for defects and newlineimproving the quality of the weldments. There are several process parameters newlinethat influence the weld bead quality which includes weld bead geometry and newlinecontinuity. Investigations on the influence of usual welding process newlineparameters like the weld gap, current, voltage, feed rate, gas flow rate, weld newlinetorch angle etc., are already done. In this work, the backing material and its newlinethickness are considered as the parameters, which is the initiative taken to newlinefurther more improve the weld quality and strength. newlineDesign of experiments is done to avoid too many trail and errors newlineon the combination of process parameter variables. Minitab16 software is newlineused to aid this purpose and L16 orthogonal array is opted for this research newlinework. Based on the sampling combinations obtained, the welding process is newlinecarried out and experiments are conducted on these welded specimen. newline