Journal of Materials Processing Technology 211 (2011) 688694

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Study on welding temperature distribution in thin welded plates through experimental measurements and nite element simulation
M.J. Attarha , I. Sattari-Far
Mechanical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, P.O. Box 15875-4413, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
The welding temperature distributions in the HAZ were measured using K-type thermocouples in similar and dissimilar thin butt-welded joints which experienced one-pass GTAW welding process. Three dimensional nite element simulations were also implemented to predict the temperature distributions throughout the plates using ABAQUS software. Comparison between experimental and simulation results reveals very good agreement. The results provide good evidence for prediction of the HAZ microstructure considering the fact that the thermocouples have been attached very closely to the weld line, and provide objective cooling slopes. The absence of ller materials in the welded joints is helpful to observe the peak temperature and cooling slope differences in relation with material properties differences. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 7 October 2010 Received in revised form 27 November 2010 Accepted 2 December 2010 Available online 8 December 2010 Keywords: Welding temperature distribution Finite element simulation Thermal analysis K-type thermocouple

1. Introduction Welding is the most reliable, efcient and practical metal joining process which is widely used in industries such as nuclear, aerospace, automobile, transportation, and off-shore. In spite of the many advantages, there are some limitations affecting this process. Welding defects inuence the desired properties of welded joints. Thermal cycles signicantly affect parameters such as residual stresses, deformations, weld microstructure, HAZ hardness. Because of local heating during welding process, controlling the thermal cycles is critical. Murugan et al. (1998) measured temperature distribution in type 304 stainless steel welded plates using thermocouples. Their results show that the temperature distributions at measuring points are clearly dependent on welding conditions. Deng and Murakawa (2006) experimentally obtained temperature distributions in butt-welded pipe joints using thermocouples and compared the results with nite element simulations. Referring to their results, it is obvious that the temperature distribution around the heat source is very steady when the welding torch moves around the pipe. In another work, Deng and Murakawa (2008) measured the temperature cycles and residual stresses in 2.25Cr1Mo steel pipes incorporating solid-state phase transformation. Kermanpur et al. (2008) studied the temperature cycles

Corresponding author at: No. 56, Asayesh Ave., Alborz Town, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 2122444068. E-mail address: javad attarha@aut.ac.ir (M.J. Attarha). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2010.12.003

due to different welding sequences and parameters of inconel 800 welded pipes. They showed that volumetric heat source provides the best results for temperature cycles throughout the pipe. Kasuya et al. (2000) suggested an analytical heat conduction model for predicting temperature histories of bidirectional multi-pass welding samples with short bead lengths, and veried the model with experimental results using thermocouples. Lee and Wu (2009) studied the effect of peak temperature and cooling rate on the susceptibility to intergranular corrosion of alloy 690 by laser beam and gas tungsten arc welding. In their welding time, the temperature was recorded continuously at various points within the HAZ and base metal, and the resulting thermal proles were then correlated with microstructural observations of the tested specimens in order to investigate the inuences of peak temperature and cooling rate on the susceptibility of the GTAW and LBW weld pieces to IGC. Robot simulation has been used by Ericsson and Nylen (2007) in combination with nite element simulations to optimize robot speed in order to minimize distortions while keeping complete joint penetration. They provided an iterative method for robot speed optimization. The proposed method allows for optimization of the heat input to the component, and thereby, minimizes component deformation for parts with complex shapes. Their model is validated comparing temperature distribution predictions with experimental measurements. In another article, variation of transient temperatures and residual stresses in a friction stir welded plate of 304L stainless steel has been measured by Zhu and Chao (2004). Three-dimensional nonlinear thermal and thermomechanical numerical welding simulations were used to predict temperature and residual stress distributions. Their results show

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Fig. 1. Specications of three butt-welded joints and the locations of thermocouples throughout weld pieces.

that due to unknown heat energy input from the process, their analysis method is unique and effective for the calculation of temperature elds. Liang and Yuan (2008) investigated welding temperature elds by non-contact temperature measurement in welding of AZ31B magnesium alloy and obtained cooling curves using thermocouples. Zhu and Chao (2002) in another work tried to investigate the effect of each temperature-dependent material property on the transient temperatures, residual stresses and distortions in the computational simulation of welding process. Their results show that the thermal conductivity has certain effects on the distribution of transient temperature elds during welding. The present work is concerned with the calculation of the transient temperature distributions developed in welded plates. Two similar and one dissimilar GATW one-pass joints are chosen here to measure the temperature cycles throughout welding. K-type thermocouples are utilized for this purpose. Based on ABAQUS software, 3D nite element models are developed in order to predict the temperature cycles. Experimental results are then conducted to validate simulations. 2. Experimental procedure The temperature measurement was implemented using K-type thermocouples. This method was used during the gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) of two similar joints from stainless steel type 304 and St37 carbon steel, and one dissimilar joint from these materials, all without application of ller materials, and the results were compared with those of nite element method. The thermocouples were located in drilled holes in the work pieces, xed at mid plane level. Temperatures were measured at different distances from the weld melt line on both left and right side of the
Table 1 Welding parameters. Experiment code E1 E2 E3 Welding voltage (V) 14.6 14.8 15.5 Welding current (I) 101 100 101

plates. Fig. 1 shows schematic of the test specimen and the thermocouple locations. As presented, the weld piece was comprised of 200 mm 200 mm 3 mm plates. To record the measured temperatures, the collected signals were transferred to a data logger and a PC. The data logger was set to record at least 10 readings per second from the thermocouples. Lab View software was used to display the thermal curves. When a thermocouple is attached to a plate, the following factors must be taken into consideration as well. The temperature is recorded at the rst point along the thermocouple at which the two wires touch. If any other junction is there along the thermocouple for any reason, the thermal cycle measurement will not be accurate. The work pieces were welded in one pass without ller material. During welding, argon backing gas was used for protecting weld of hot cracking. Voltage and current were noted during welding by means of welding apparatus. Furthermore, the duration of welding pass was recorded and through which, welding speed was calculated. The voltage (V), current (I) and the traveling speed (v) of the weld passes in each joint are given in Table 1. Considering an arc efciency of 0.5 ( ) for GTAW process (Zhu and Chao, 2002), the heat input per mm length of weld (Qw ) was calculated using the following equation: Qw = VI (1)

Transient temperature distributions are reported in the following sections in detail for each joint mentioned above. The variations of temperature vs. distance from the weld melt line have also been considered. The chemical compositions of steels S304 and St37 are provided in Table 2.

Welding speed (mm s1 ) 1.8 3.125 2.3

Arc efciency 50% 50% 50%

Shielding gas Ar (Lit/miri) 10 10 10

Heat input (kJ mm1 ) 0.409 0.237 0.341

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Table 2 Chemical composition of AISI type 304 stainless steel and St37 carbon steel. Grade S304 St37 C 0.046 0.12 Mn 1.5 0.57 Si 0.7 0.02 P 0.025 0.01 S 0.003 0.012 Cr 18.42 0.002 Mo 0.08 0.01 Ni 8.13 0.03 Co 0.06 0.001

modeling of welding arc, based on the double ellipsoidal distribution proposed by Goldak et al. (1984), which is expressed by the following equations. For the front heat source: 6 3ff Qw 3x 2 /2 3y 2 /b2 3z 2 /c2 1e e (2) Q (x , y , z , t ) = e 1 bc And for the rear heat source: 6 3fr Qw 3x 2 /2 3y 2 /b2 3z 2 /c2 2e Q (x , y , z , t ) = e e 2 bc

(3)

Fig. 2. 3D nite element model and meshing in welding simulation.

3. Numerical procedure Based on using ABAQUS software, a thermal nite element computational procedure was developed to calculate welding temperature elds during welding of three one-pass butt-welded joints. The heat conduction problem has been solved using heat transfer analysis to obtain temperature histories. The formulation considers the contributions of the transient temperature eld, as well as temperature-dependent thermo-physical properties. In the nite element simulation, GTAW process with no ller metal has been considered for three butt-welded joints of AISI type 304 Stainless Steel and St37 carbon steel, as illustrated in Fig. 2. The material properties included are presented in Table 3. Because of the symmetry condition of the two similar joints, one plate has been modeled; while in the dissimilar joint, both plates have been modeled. The model mesh is shown in Fig. 2. The dimensions of the simulation model are the same as the experimental specimen. In the weld zone and its vicinity, a ne mesh has been considered. The number of nodes is 9999, and that of elements is 6400. 8-noded brick elements of type DC3D8 have been used in the thermal analysis code. The effect of mesh size has been studied through the method proposed by Malik et al. (2008). In this method, the peak temperature is the parameter being studied in sensitivity analysis of the mesh size. Application of a ner mesh in this work led to less than 2% difference in the peak temperatures. Thus, the presented mesh was used. DFLUX user subroutine has been employed using the FORTRAN language and called in the model to calculate the heat ux. A moving volumetric heat source has been considered for the
Table 3 Thermo-physical properties of St37 carbon steel and AISI type 304 stainless steel. S304 Temperature ( C) 0.0000 100.00 200.00 300.00 400.00 600.00 800.00 1200.0 1300.0 1500.0

where x , y and z are the local coordinates of the double ellipsoid model aligned with the weld line. ff and fr are parameters for dening the fraction of the heat deposited in the front and the rear of the welding arc, respectively, and ff + fr = 2.0. In this work, ff was considered 1.4 and fr was 0.6. It should be noticed that temperature gradient in the front of the arc is much steeper than that of the rare. Qw is the welding heat source power. The calculation of this parameter has been mentioned in Section 2. The parameters a1 , a2 , b, and c belong to the features of welding heat source. These parameters can be determined through experimental study of the weld pool and may be adjusted to create a desired melted zone according to the welding conditions. Since in this work, one pass GTAW has been carried out without usage of ller metals, the common techniques of adding weld elements, such as element birth and death, element movement and element interaction, are not applicable. When the welding arc is applied to the work-pieces, the whole weld line is present and undergoes heating. Thus, application of the mentioned techniques induces errors in the simulation, and in this work, the moving heat source reaches to the weld elements, which are included in the model throughout the entire simulation time. During welding, the governing equation for transient heat transfer analysis is given by: c T q (x, y, z, t ) + Q (x, y, z, t ) (x, y, z, t ) = t (4)

where is the density of the materials, c is the specic heat capacity, T is the current temperature, q is the heat ux vector, Q is the internal heat generation rate, x, y and z are the coordinates in the reference system, t is the time, and is the spatial gradient operator. The non-linear isotropic Fourier heat ux constitutive equation is employed: q = k T where k is the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity. (5)

St37

Density (kg/m ) 7900.00 7880.00 7830.00 7790.00 7750.00 7660.00 7560.00 7370.00 7320.00 7320.00

Specic heat (J/kg C) 462 496 512 525 540 577 604 676 692 700

Conductivity (J/m C) 14.6 15.1 16.1 17.9 18.0 20.8 23.9 32.2 33.7 120

Specic heat (J/kg C) 444 472 503 537 579 692 837 860 863

Conductivity (J/m C s) 45.9 44.8 43.4 41.4 38.9 33.6 28.7 28.6 29.5

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Fig. 3. Welding direction and temperature elds at the middle of weld line. Fig. 4. Temperature history during welding for experiment E1, at points with different distances from the weld melt line.

Fig. 5. Temperature history, comparison between experiment E1 and nite element simulation results at points with different distances from the weld melt line, (a) 3 mm, (b) 8 mm, (c) 13 mm, (d) 18 mm, (e) 23 mm.

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Table 4 Temperature-dependent combined convection coefcient model (Salonitis et al., 2007). h [W/m2 K] 1.85 9.079 18.5 52.6 T T0 [K] 56 278 556 2778

To consider the heat losses, both the thermal radiation and heat transfer on the weld surface have been considered. Radiation losses are dominating for higher temperatures near and in the weld zone, and convection losses for lower temperatures away from the weld zone (Deng and Murakawa, 2006). It is customary to use combined thermal boundary conditions to avoid the difculties associated with radiation modeling. Likewise, a temperature dependent combined convection coefcient has been used to model the cooling condition. Table 4 presents the temperature dependent convection coefcients. 4. Results and discussion 4.1. Similar butt weld joint of St37 carbon steel Fig. 3 presents the temperature contours and welding direction in the nite element simulation model of this joint. In Fig. 4, the temperature distributions throughout the weld pieces at different points with certain distances from the weld melt line are illustrated. The maximum temperature at the point with 3 mm distance from the melt line is about 550 C. It is important to notice that the decrease of temperature with distance has a nonlinear trend. The reason is associated with the local heating of the welding torch and the nonlinear variation of the materials thermal properties with temperature. The experimental and nite element simulation results are compared for distances mentioned above in Fig. 5. It is obvious that the results have generally good conformity, but the difference between the results is noticeable at the temperature rise. It is probably due to molten spattering during fusion welding and the selection of heat source model. Peak temperature distribution with distance from the weld melt line is shown in Fig. 6. 4.2. AISI type 304 Stainless steel similar butt weld joint Temperature histories of the points in the left weld piece, obtained by experimental measurements, are presented in Fig. 7,

Fig. 7. Temperature history during welding for experiment E2, at points with different distances from the weld melt line.

Fig. 8. Peak temperatures vs. distance from weld melt line for experiment E2 and nite element simulation results.

for this joint. The maximum temperature is about 470 C. Comparing Figs. 4 and 7, it is clear that the slope of cooling in St37 is steeper than S304 which is because of the differences in thermal properties, especially thermal conductivity. The peak temperature distributions, extracted from both experimental and FE results, are illustrated in Fig. 8. 4.3. Butt weld joint of dissimilar metals In this section, the temperature distribution in a dissimilar buttwelded joint comprised of St37 carbon steel and AISI type 304 stainless steel is studied (Figs. 911). The experimental temperature histories are shown in Figs. 9 and 11 for St37 and S304, respectively. It can be seen that pick temperatures of S304 are higher than St37. The experimental measurement and nite element results are compared for both materials in Figs. 10 and 12. The

Fig. 6. Peak temperatures vs. distance from weld melt line for experiment E1 and nite element simulation results.

Fig. 9. Temperature history during welding for experiment E3, at points with different distances from the weld melt line in St37 carbon steel weld piece.

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Fig. 10. Temperature history, comparison between experiment E3 and nite element simulation results at points with different distances from the weld melt line in St37 carbon steel weld piece, (a) 3 mm, (b) 8 mm, (c) 13 mm.

Fig. 12. Temperature history, comparison between experiment E3 and nite element simulation results at points with different distances from the weld melt line in AISI type 304 stainless steel weld piece, (f) 3 mm, (g) 8 mm, (h) 13 mm.

Fig. 11. Temperature history during welding for experiment E3, at points with different distances from the weld melt line in AISI type 304 stainless steel weld piece, (F) 3 mm, (G) 8 mm, (H) 13 mm.

Fig. 13. St37 and S304 peak temperatures vs. distance from weld melt line for experiment E3 and nite element simulation results.

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cooling slopes are displayed for both materials in Fig. 13. As can be observed, this slope for St37 is slightly lower than S304. It should be noticed that since there is no consumable ller material in the dissimilar welded work-pieces and considering the symmetry during welding, the differences between peak temperatures and cooling rates most correspond to thermal material properties, especially thermal conductivity. Another reason behind peak temperature differences may be attributed to the effect of phase transformation on St37 carbon steel. Occurrence of solid state phase transformation in St37 carbon steel absorbs a proportion of heat source energy. 5. Conclusions 3D nite element simulation of GTAW welding for three joints (two similar and one dissimilar) comprised of AISI type 304 stainless steel and St37 carbon steel thin plates, was studied, and the temperature distributions and histories were compared with experimental measurements. Comparison between the nite element and experimental results revealed that the developed model had good capability for predicting the temperature cycles throughout welding. The following conclusions may be conducted: (1) Peak temperature distribution vs. distance in the weld pieces shows that the temperature decreasing behavior has a nonlinear nature. Prediction of the cooling slope with distance can be used in the prediction of the HAZ microstructure. (2) Comparing the peak temperatures in the dissimilar joint of St37 carbon steel and type 304 stainless steel, it is revealed that the S304 peak temperature near the weld melt line is higher than St37. The difference between thermal conductivity coefcients can justify this behavior.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their acknowledgement to Dr. R. Moharrami and Mr. I. Akbarzadeh for their fruitful help and support during the course of this project. References
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