Role of Welding Parameters in Determining the Geometrical Appearance of Weld Pool

A three-dimensional numerical model is developed to describe the fluid flow and heat transfer in weld pools. Both full penetration and free deformation of the top and bottom weld pool surfaces are considered. Temperature distribution and fluid flow field are obtained. In order to analyze the influence of welding parameters on the geometrical appearance of weld pools, a normalized model is developed to characterize the geometrical appearance of weld pools. It is found that welding current can significantly affect the geometrical shape. When welding current increases, the curvature of the pool boundary at the trailing end increases. The effect of the welding speed on the geometrical appearance is slight, although its influence on the pool size is great. In the interest range of arc length (from 1 mm to 4 mm), the arc length can affect both the size and the shape of the weld pool. However, compared with the welding current and speed, its influences are much weaker. GTA welding experiments are performed to verify the validity of the numerical models. The appearance of weld pools was obtained by using machine vision and a high-shutter speed camera. It is found that the calculated results have a good agreement with the experimental ones.