ANGULAR DISTORTION IN BUTT ARC WELDING-Yukler-2018
ANGULAR DISTORTION IN BUTT ARC WELDING-Yukler-2018
ANGULAR DISTORTION IN BUTT ARC WELDING-Yukler-2018
** Marmara University Applied Science High School, Goztepe Campus, Istanbul, 34722
(irfan.yukler@nisantasi.edu.tr)
‡ Corresponding Author; Ahmet İrfan Yükler, Nisantasi University, Engineering Faculty, 1453 Agaoglu Maslak, 34398
Sarıyer/İstanbul Tel: +2122101010
Abstract - The importance of fusion welding technology has been widely recognized in the manufacturing process of various
steel structures such as ships, bridges, construction machines, power plants, and automobiles. However, a significant
disadvantage of fusion welding is that it often generates unacceptable levels of geometric imperfections such as shrinkage and
distortion. Angular distortion is a major problem and most pronounced among different types of distortion in the butt welded
plates. This angular distortion is mainly caused by the non-uniform extension and contraction through thickness direction due
to the temperature gradient. The principal factors affecting the degree of welding angular distortion are: material properties
(the thermal expansion coefficient, the thermal conductivity and the specific heat), weld groove geometry, joint type and
welding procedures (welding current, arc voltage, welding speed, shielding gas chemical composition, gas flow rate, welding
gun angle, time gap between successive passes and number of passes). All these factors are explained in the paper.
1. Introduction
Rotational distortion is an in-plane angular distortion due to 2.2. Weld groove geometry and joint type
the localized thermal expansion and shrinkage.
The thermal conductivity is a measure of heat flow in the
material. Thermal conductivity increases slightly as
temperature of the material increases. Higher thermal
conductivity results in a uniform heat distribution along the
plate’s thickness and width. With that, the thermal gradients
responsible for shrinkage stresses are reduced, decreasing the
weld distortion (9). The lower thermal conductivity causes a
steeper temperature gradient which increases the distortion.
Therefore weld distortions were highly sensible to the
thermal conductivity (10).
The specific heat of a material is defined as the heat
Figure 2. Development of angular distortion in butt welding capacity per unit of mass of a certain material. The heat
of a single “V” Groove (5). capacity measures the ratio between transferred heat to or
A: Centroid of the weld metal, B: Centroid of the transversal from the material and its temperature change. Higher values
cross-section, F:Transverse shrinkage forces and RF: of specific heat reduce the peak temperature achieved during
Resultant shrinkage force. welding (1). The shrinkage forces are proportional to the
peak temperature achieved in the plate (7).
Phase transition effect is proven to affect the residual
2. Factors Which Affect Angular Distortion stresses and distortions on some steel grades. The maximum
The principal factors affecting the degree of welding temperature reached and the metal’s cooling rate produce
angular distortion (6) are: material properties, weld groove dissimilar martensitic fractions for different steel grades. The
geometry, joint type, amount of restraint, and welding phase transformation has little effect on distortion for low
procedure. All these factors are explained below. carbon steels while on the other hand, it has a rather
significant effect on distortion for mid and high carbon steels.
2.1. Effects of material properties It is known that when cooling rate is fast enough, the
austenite transforms to martensite. This transformation
The mechanical and thermal properties of the base metal increaes the material’s total volume. This increase in volume
are of high importance in which concerns to weld distortion. partially cancels the transverse shrinkage, reducing weld
The most important base metal properties which influence on distortion in mid and high carbon steels. The increase in
weld distortion are the yield strength, the Young’s Modulus, volume creates compressive stresses and reduces the residual
the thermal expansion coefficient, the thermal conductivity stresses for mid and high carbon steels (11).
and the specific heat.
The Young’s Modulus is linked to base material’s
rigidity and decreases when increasing the temperature. If at
high temperatures the yield strength is too high, there’s an
inability of the thermal strains to produce plastic
deformations i.e. only elastic strains would be present and
zero plastic strains produced. The high-temperature yield
strength of a material affectes its angular distortion. Angular
distortion increased with high-temperature yield strength. The
yield strength of high strength steels are higher than mild
steels at high temperatures. Therefore high strength steels
have lower distortion resistance compared to mild steels (7).
The same trend was found in aluminium alloys (8).
Higher coefficient of thermal expansion means higher
amount of expansion, when heated and greater subsequent
contraction when cooled. High coefficient of thermal
expansion tends to increase the shrinkage of the weld metal
and the metal adjacent to the weld. Thus increases
distortion(7).
The thermal expansion coefficient, is a property that
quantifies the physical expansion of a material when heated
up. Higher coefficient of thermal expansion means higher
amount of expansion, when heated and greater subsequent Figure 3. (a) A butt joint with greater top side shrinkage
contraction when cooled. High coefficient of thermal force (TSF) due to greater weld deposition at the top side; (b)
expansion tends to increase the shrinkage of the weld metal A butt joint with near equal top side shrinkage force (TSF)
and the metal adjacent to the weld. Thus distortion increases and bottom side shrinkage force (BSF) (12).
with the thermal expansion(7).
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pulse frequency or smaller pulse spacing can enhance the 2.3.3. Welding speed
energy density of the welding heat source, thereby reducing
the angular distortion of austenitic stainless steel weldments.
Greater pulse amplitude ratio and duration ratio can reduce
the temperature difference between the fusion zone and
unaffected base metal zone in the weldment, and thus
decreases the angular distortion(31). Figure 9 shows the
effect of pulse frequency on angular distortion and residual
stress of 316L stainless steel pulsed TIG weldment(32). The
results indicated that the angular distortion and residual stress Figure 11. Effect of welding speed on distortion(26).
decrease with the increase of the pulse frequency.
It has been observed from the Figure 11 that there has been a
decrease in angular distortion degrees with an increase in
welding speed. The reason for this can be attributed to the
fact that at high welding speed, heat input will be low
resulting in a decrease in angular distortion(34). The
interaction effects are negligible in case of welding speed.
2.3.2. Arc voltage Figure 12. Effect of nitrogen in shielding gas on the
angular distortion of TIG and A-TIG welds(38).
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Figure 14. The effect of torch angle on angular Specimens of ASTM A36 structural steel were welded
distortion(27). using V-groove butt-joints. During the welding process, the
angular distortion was measured after each welding
It has been observed from the Figure 14 that there has been operation. Four constant heat inputs were employed in the
an increase in angular distortion from 2.2 degrees to 3.02 experiments by adjusting the current, voltage and wire feed
degrees with an increase in torch angle from 45 to 90 speed. The number of passes needed to complete the weld
degrees(27). The reason for this can be attributed to the fact decreased with increasing the the heat input. The cumulative
that for steeper torch angle, the depth of penetration in the angular distortion of each experiment was shown in Figure
plate is slightly greater than that for a shallow angled torch. 16(42). The welding operation finished with 14 passes in
Thus, the heat amount input in the weld bead, giving non- E1(0.7 kJ/mm heat input) group. The distortion increased
uniform distribution leads to distortion which is more in with the number of the pass. In E4 group the weld completed
steeper torch angle positions and less in shallow torch angle in 5 passes. The angular distortion produced in a given weld
positions. There however existed a region between minimum pass was roughly same for all experiments of group,
and maximum value of currents in which the angular regardless of heat input used in each group. For example
distortion was found to be first increased and then decreased. equal distortion was obtained in 5 passes for each test group.
The reason might be interaction effects of other welding Figure 16 indicates that angular distortion increases with the
parameters(27). number of welding passes. Welding with high energy input
and less number of passes causes smaller distortion. Kumar’s
findings(6) reinforces this result.
2.3.6. Time gap between successive passes
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