Investigation of Thermal Efficiency and Depth of Penetration during GTAW Process

A numerical and experimental investigation of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) of AISI 304L was carried out to obtain the thermal field, depth of penetration with varying input process parameters. A three-dimensional finite element model is developed to simulate the GTAW welding process considering double ellipsoidal heat source with Gaussian heat flux distribution. A novel iso-volume approach is used to estimate the melting efficiency of the process and calculated maximum melting efficiency of the process is found 44 %. Calculated results in terms of thermal histories and depth of penetration have compared with measured results and are in good agreement.