ABSTRACT

Stainless steel is a widely used material in various industries such as aerospace, chemical processing and transportation. Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) or Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) process is extensively used for joining thin sections of stainless steel. However, it is not useful in joining thick sections in a single pass. Activated TIG (A-TIG) significantly increases weld penetration up to 1.5– 4 times in a single pass. Because of its deep penetration ability, A-TIG is the focus of research amongst the researchers. This article reports the mechanisms associated with A-TIG, effects of various weld parameters on weld bead geometry and optimization techniques to optimize the process variable of the A-TIG welding process. The present work also analyzes the consequence of activated fluxes on microstructure and mechanical properties of A-TIG weld metal. Along with this, recent developments in the TIG welding process have been discussed. The study concludes that the A-TIG welding process enhances the weld penetration to a great extent, but a high amount of slug gets deposited on the weld surface. This drawback can be overcome by novel variants of the A-TIG welding process such as Flux Bounded TIG (FB-TIG) and Flux Zone TIG (FZ-TIG) welding processes which enhance the future scope of research.

摘要

不锈钢是航空航天，化学加工和运输等各个行业中广泛使用的材料。钨极惰性气体保护（TIG）或钨极氩弧焊（GTAW）工艺广泛用于连接不锈钢的薄壁部分。但是，在单次通过中连接厚截面时没有用。激活的TIG（A-TIG）可在一次焊道中将焊缝熔深显着提高至1.5-4倍。由于其深厚的渗透能力，A-TIG成为研究人员中研究的重点。本文报告了与A-TIG焊接相关的机理，各种焊接参数对焊缝几何形状的影响以及优化技术以优化A-TIG焊接工艺的过程变量。本工作还分析了活化焊剂对A-TIG焊缝金属组织和力学性能的影响。伴随着此，已经讨论了TIG焊接工艺的最新发展。研究得出的结论是，A-TIG焊接工艺在很大程度上提高了焊接熔深，但是大量的团块沉积在焊接表面上。可以通过A-TIG焊接工艺的新颖变体来克服这一缺点，例如，药芯焊丝TIG（FB-TIG）和焊剂区域TIG（FZ-TIG）焊接工艺，这些都可以扩大未来的研究范围。