ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WELDING CURRENT AND WELD METAL DEPOSITION RATE FOR SOLID WIRE IN SUBMERGED ARC WELDING PROCESS

Submerged Arc Welding (SAW) process is used to weld large, heavy metal deposition jobs with critical requirements, and this metal joining process alone is used to weld approximately 10% of the deposited weld metal worldwide. Any augmentation in productivity of SAW process, will immensely benefit the welding industry, as this process is widely used on variety of common metals and alloys. This paper focusses on establishing relationship between welding current and productivity (in terms of weld metal deposition rate as an index), for a given filler wire diameter. Productivity rates of most common solid filler wire sizes were studied, at different preset current values, covering full current range through bead-on-plate experiments. At each preset current value, the bead was first optimized for acceptable visual quality, by varying arc travel speed and voltage, then wire feed rate (of acceptable beads) was noted. The current density, heat input and corresponding weld metal deposition rate were calculated for establishing relationships. The established relationships can be effectively used, to estimate productivity from the preset current values, for a given solid wire diameter.