Development of circumferential TIG welding process model: A simulation model for welding of pipe and plate

摘要

It is useful to develop a numerical model for various welding positions in order to understand welding phenomena. Welding simulation models for a particular application could help in offline robot programming and online robot control. The objective of this study was to develop a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding simulation model for various workpieces of different shapes. The present model may be easily applied to several workpiece configurations. This article deals with a model for circumferential welding of a pipe to a plate of mild steel, and aluminium alloys. The calculated results clarify that a homogeneous weld is hardly obtained at a fixed pipe welding position due to gravity, and that weld bead shape varies sensitively with wall thickness in pipe to plate welding. It is concluded that the model proposed in this article is useful to simply simulate TIG welding and provides a powerful means to estimate the optimum process parameters in welding practice.