PREDICTION OF GEOMETRY OF PULSED GMAW FILLET WELDED JOINTS OF STRUCTURAL STEELS.

Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) is nowadays widely used welding process for structural steels. It is highly efficient and can be easily automatized. Therefore, GMAW is particularly useful for welding of long sections in shop-floor conditions. Such components are prefabricated parts of ship hulls and bridges and parts of heavy machinery. Pulsed variant of GMAW is even more productive and efficient regarding use of filler material and welding time, often used as fully automatized or robotic process. However, such significant production rate requires efficient quality control of welds. The simplest way to do it is by visual inspection, which includes acquiring weld geometry and dimensions. That can be easily done by using optical measuring devices and cameras, which acquire necessary data directly after welding. However, this way of quality and process control needs relationship(s) between input (welding parameters and heat input) and output (weld geometry and dimensions). This paper presents principal relations between abovementioned inputs and outputs for single-pass fillet welds of structural steels. Considered output includes geometrical properties (fillet weld size, penetration, dilution, and reinforcement), while relations are described with fitting curves based on linear regression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]