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 weldment by reducing the defects in the MIG welded joint. MIG welding is taken into consideration as it finds its application in a wide range, making it available both commercially and economically. Moreover in this study SS304L is opted as the base metal for the weldment study as it is more commonly used material since it has dominant properties like corrosive resistant, weldability, durability, etc. which finds its application in boiler units, chemical plants, pipelines so forth and so no. Hence this combination of MIG welding process and SS304L base material is considered for the study. newlineThe study of defects helps in sorting out the cause for defects and improving the quality of the weldments. There are several process parameters that influence the weld bead quality which includes weld bead geometry and continuity. Investigations on the influence of usual welding process parameters like the weld gap, current, voltage, feed rate, gas flow rate, weld torch angle etc., are already done. In this work, the backing material and its thickness are considered as the parameters, which is the initiative taken to further more improve the weld quality and strength. newlineDesign of experiments is done to avoid too many trail and errors on the combination of process parameter variables. Minitab16 software is used to aid this purpose and L16 orthogonal array is opted for this research work. Based on the sampling combinations obtained, the welding process is carried out and experiments are conducted on these welded specimen. newline newline