MEASUREMENT OF SURFACE TENSION OF MOLTEN METALS IN ARC WELDING

Many reports have been shown that the buoyancy, electromagnetic force, surface tension, and gas shear stress are the driving forces of weld pool circulation in arc welding. Among them, the surface tension of molten metal plays an important role in the flow in weld pool, which are clarified by the specially designed experiments with small particles as well as the numerical simulations. The surface tension is also related to the penetration in arc welding. Therefore, a quantitative evaluation of surface tension is demanded for the development of materials and arc process control. However, there are few available data published on the surface tension of molten metals, since it depends on the temperature and the composition of materials. In this study, a new method was proposed for the evaluation of surface tension and its temperature dependence, in which it is evaluated by the equilibrium condition of acting forces under a given surface geometry, especially back surface. When this method was applied to the water pool and to the back surface of molten pool in the stationary gas tungsten arc welding of thin plate, following results were obtained. In the evaluation of surface tension of water, it was shown that the back surface geometry was very sensitive to the evaluation of surface tension and the evaluated value coincided with the surface tension of water. In the measurement of molten pool in the stationary gas tungsten arc welding, it was also shown that the comparison between the surface tension and temperature distribution across the back surface gave the temperature dependent surface tension. Applying this method to the mild steel and stainless steel plates, the surface tension with negative gradient for temperature is obtained. The evaluated values are well matched with ones in the published papers.