Critical Assessment of Temperature Distribution in Submerged Arc Welding Process

Abstract

Temperature distribution during any welding process holds the key for understanding and predicting several important welding attributes like heat affected zone, microstructure of the weld, residual stress, and distortion during welding. The accuracy of the analytical approaches for modeling temperature distribution during welding has been constrained by oversimplified assumptions regarding boundary conditions and material properties. In this paper, an attempt has been made to model the temperature distribution during submerged arc welding process using finite element modeling technique implemented in ANSYS v12. In the present analysis, heat source is assumed to be double-ellipsoidal with Gaussian volumetric heat generation. Furthermore, variation of material properties with temperature and both convective and radiant heat loss boundary condition have been considered. The predicted temperature distribution is then validated against the experimental results obtained by thermal imaging of the welded plate, and they are found to be in a good agreement.