• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.36-46
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• 1997

Dynamics of molten drop detachment in the Gas Metal Arc (GMA) welding is investigated using the Volume of Fluid(VOF) method. The electromagnetic effects are included in the formulation of the VOF method which has been widely used to analyze the dynamics of the fluid having a free surface. The molten drop geometry, pressure and velocity profiles within the drop are calculated numerically in the cases of globular and spray transfer modes. It appears that the velocity and current distribution affect metal detachment. It is found that the taper is formed and maintained during the spray transfer by the electromagnetic force. Predicted results show reasonably good agreement with the available experimental data which validates the application of the VOF method to metal transfer analysis.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.115-121
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• 1995

As the metal transfer in the GMAW process affects the weld quality and productivity, the mechanism of molten formation and detachment has been investigated at various welding conditions. The force balance and pinch instability models have been widely used to analyze the metal transfer in the globular and spray modes, respectively A new approach is proposed in this work by minimizing the energy of molten drop system. Effects of the surface tension, gravity, electromagnetic and drag forces are considered with no presumed molten drop geometry. Effects of various welding conditions on the metal transfer are explained. The results show that the proposed mode can be applied to the globular and spray transfer modes. When compared with other models, results of the proposed model show better agreements with the available experimental data, which demonstrates the validity of the present model.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.69-77
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• 2004

The Gaussian heat source has been widely used to simulate the heat flux of the welding we, and applied to calculating the temperature distribution of a workpiece. The conventional two-dimensional Gaussian heat source for the GMAW is modified in this work by decomposing the arc heat into heats of the cathode and metal transfer. The efficiency and effective arc radius of each heat source are determined analytically for the free-flight mode such as the globular and spray modes. The temperature distribution and weld geometry are calculated using the finite element method, and distribution of the drop heat is found to have significant effects on the penetration. The predicted results show good agreements with the available experimental results, especially with the penetration.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.73-79
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• 1993

The phenomenon of metal transfer has been investigated for different transfer modes using a digital high speed motion analyzer and an arc shadow-graphing system based on a laser source and related optical system. It was observed that the pinch instability phenomenon did not occur for the globular transfer mode, since the liquid globule was then spherical rateher than a cylindrical liquid bar. On increasing the ratio of carbon dioxide to argon, the transition current from globular to spray transfer generally increased, but it is interesting that the transition was observed to occur at the lowest current in a 5% CO$_{2}$-95% argon gas mixture. For pure carbon dioxide and helium shielding gases, the drop frequency increased slowly with increasing current. At high currents or an argon based shielding gas, the length of liquid bar decreased as the carbon dioxide content increased. The acceleration of a droplet within the arc was determined using the gas drag force theory and was found to be greater than the experimental results.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.83-90
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• 2002

Metal Transfer in gas metal arc (GMA) welding is a complex phenomenon affected by many parameters of the welding conditions and material properties. In this research, the correlation equation between the welding condition and detaching droplet size and detaching velocity in GMA welding was studied via recession analysis on the results of numerical analysis using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method. Welding parameters and material properties were grouped into three dimensionless numbers and detaching droplet size was expressed as the function of them. Second order and exponential multi-variable correlation forms were assumed, and the coefficients of these equations were calculated for globular and spray modes as well as entire transfer modes. Applying correlation equation into available experimental data, it shows good agreement.