A multiphysics computational model has been developed for the conventional Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) joining process and used to analyze butt-welding of MIL A46100, a prototypical high-hardness armor martensitic steel. The model consists of five distinct modules, each covering a specific aspect of the GMAW process, i.e., (a) dynamics of welding-gun behavior; (b) heat transfer from the electr...

For many years, the welding community has assumed that the detachment events within Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process are stochastically driven. With this in mind, we set out to better understand these mechanisms and what might drive the detachment events. Through the investigation of 6061-Aluminum GMAW, a number of new insights into globular, and spray transfer modes have been found. By usi...

Laser-enhanced gas metal arc welding (GMAW) is an innovative process recently proposed and developed at the University of Kentucky (Refs. 1–3), shown in Fig. 1. It adds a relatively low-power laser to conventional GMAW, and the objective is to provide an auxiliary force to help detach the droplet at a desired diameter with a desired welding current. In laserenhanced GMAW, the droplet size is a ...

Controlled metal transfer in gas metal arc welding (GMAW) implies controllable weld quality. To understand, analyse and control the metal transfer process, the droplet should be monitored and tracked. To process the metal transfer images in double-electrode GMAW (DE-GMAW), a novel modification of GMAW, a brightness-based algorithm is proposed to locate the droplet and compute the droplet size a...

A group of stainless steel arc welding processes was compared for emission rates of fume and hexavalent chromium, and costs per meter length of weld. The objective was to identify those with minimal emissions and also compare relative labor and consumables costs. The selection included flux-cored arc welding (FCAW), shielded-metal arc welding (SMAW), and multiple gas metal arc welding (GMAW) pr...

Installation of new pipelines is predicted to grow at a rapid rate over the next twenty years, due in part to the increase use worldwide of combined cycle power generation plant using natural gas a fuel. The need to construct large diameter pipelines over long distances has led to an increased demand to improve the productivity of pipeline girth welding. Many novel techniques have been tried in...

Gas metal arc welding (GMAW) is the most widely used process for metal joining because of its high productivity and good quality, but analysis shows that the fundamental characteristic restricts conventional GMAW from further increasing the welding productivity. A novel GMAW process, refereed to as double-electrode GMAW or DE-GMAW, thus has been developed to make it possible to increase the mel...

To provide quantitative information to choose the best welding processes for minimizing workplace emissions, nine gas metal arc welding (GMAW) processes for mild steel were assessed for fume generation rates, normalized fume generation rates (milligram fume per gram of electrode consumed), and normalized generation rates for elemental manganese, nickel, and iron. Shielded metal arc welding (SMA...

Double-Electrode Gas Metal Arc Welding (DE-GMAW) is a novel welding process recently developed to increase welding productivity while maintaining the base metal heat input at a desired low level. In this paper, the DE-GMAW process was improved by replacing its non-consumable tungsten electrode with a consumable welding wire electrode resulting in a new process called consumable DE-GMAW. To unde...

Arc sensors have been used in seam tracking and widely studied since the 80s and commercial arc sensing products for T and V shaped grooves have been developed. However, it is difficult to use these arc sensors in narrow gap welding because the arc stability and sensing accuracy are not satisfactory. Pulse gas melting arc welding (P-GMAW) has been successfully applied in narrow gap welding and ...