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Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 244252

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Effect of boric acid concentration on the arc stability in underwater


wet welding
Ning Guo a,b, , Changsheng Xu b , Yongpeng Du b , Meirong Wang b , Jicai Feng a,b ,
Zongquan Deng c , Dongyan Tang d
a

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Welding and Joining, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150000, China
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Special Welding Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai, Weihai 264200, China
c
School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
d
Department of Chemistry, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 14 July 2015
Received in revised form
11 September 2015
Accepted 12 September 2015
Available online 15 September 2015
Keywords:
Underwater wet welding
Boric acid concentration
Arc stability
X-ray transmission

a b s t r a c t
To determine the arc stability during underwater wet welding in boric acid solutions with various concentrations, a real-time electrical signal acquisition system is established. Four methods for determining
the arc stability, i.e., dynamic characteristics, probability distribution of voltage and current, current and
voltage cyclograms, and coefcients of variation of voltage and current, were adopted. There were two
short-circuited modes, which referred to the long-periodic short-circuits model and the short-periodic
short-circuits model. Metal transfer images of the two modes were obtained, and the proportion of the
long-periodic model increased with the concentration of boric acid in aqueous solution. The arc stability
during underwater wet welding deteriorated with increasing the boric acid concentration.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
During the operation of nuclear power equipment, it is necessary to conduct regular maintenance to ensure the stability and
safety of the equipment. In general, underwater welding is effective
for completing most repairs. Moreover, water, as a moderator and
coolant in nuclear power reactors, must be retained in the reactor
during the process of welding to prevent nuclear radiation pollution. Therefore, underwater wet welding is widely used in the
maintenance of nuclear power equipment.
Verbeke et al. (2000) developed a sealed-accelerator-tube neutron generator and discovered that boron possesses strong neutron
absorptivity. Therefore, boric acid is dissolved into the water in
the cooling circuit of the power plant reactor to control the reaction rate and to ensure the stability and safety of reactor operation.
Generally, the concentration of boric acid is constant under the running status conditions of the nuclear plant reactors. But if nuclear
plant reactors malfunction, the concentration of boric acid will be
increased to absorb more neutron and reduce radiation quantity. So

Corresponding author at: No.2 Wenhuaxi Road, Weihai, 264209, China.


Fax: +86 631 5677156.
E-mail address: gn21c@126.com (N. Guo).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2015.09.028
0924-0136/ 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

the concentration of boric acid differs under the maintaining status


conditions of the nuclear plant reactors. Moreover, it is well-known
that boric acid has markedly high activity at high temperature and
excellent oxidizability and reducibility. Therefore, boric acid dissolved in the water is likely to have an effect on the welding process.
Thus, it is important to study the effect of the boric acid concentration on the underwater wet welding process.
Arc stability is the capacity to stably make the arc burn and reappear during the welding process. A stable arc is required to obtain
high-quality welds during underwater wet welding. The ionization of the gas in the arc column will be more formidable due to
the prominent cooling of the water, which makes the underwater
welding arc burn unsustainably. In addition, welding bubbles periodically break, and other factors also induce deterioration in the
stability of the welding process. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate
and control the arc stability during the underwater wet welding
process.
Suban and Tusek (2003) described several methods for the
assessment of arc stability during MAG/MIG welding process and
presented the arc stability could be determined based on the analysis of the arc voltage and welding current signals, arc light, and
noise emitted during the welding process. Luksa (2006) investigated the stability of welding arcs by monitoring the gas metal arc
welding (GMAW) process. Li et al. (2011) collected and thoroughly

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245

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the electrical signal acquisition system.

analyzed the arc light spectrum to determine the quality of the weld
produced by GMAW. Pal et al. (2010) investigated the arc sound
and metal transfer modes for on-line monitoring in pulsed GMAW.
Among these methods for determining arc stability, Li et al. (2000)

argued that analyses of voltage and current signals are often used
because of their reliability and simplicity. Therefore, in the underwater wet welding process, analyses of the arc voltage and welding
current signals are often used.

Fig. 2. Dynamic characteristics of voltage and current with varying concentrations of boric acid: (a) 0 ppm, (b) 10,000 ppm, (c) 20,000 ppm, and (d) 40,000 ppm.

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N. Guo et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 244252

Mazzaferro and Machado (2009) investigated the effects of


changes in the hydrostatic pressure and electrode coating composition on the shielded metal arc behavior during underwater
wet welding. They analyzed welding arc signals through indices
calculated from instantaneous values of the current and voltage
and fast Fourier transforms of the frequency spectrum. Shi et al.
(2012) suggested that a good evaluation result can be obtained
using the reciprocal of the arc voltage difference coefcient to
determinate arc stability. Their research results indicate that the
arc stability in underwater wet welding at shallow depths deteriorates with increasing welding current and improves with increasing
welding voltage. Guo et al. (2015a,b) explored the effect of arc voltage on the stability of the underwater wet ux-cored arc welding
process by studying the droplet transfer process using the X-ray
transmission method and indicated that there was a critical arc
voltage.
There are many indices for the determination of arc stability
based on analysis of the arc voltage and welding current signals.
Dynamic characteristics indicates the values of welding current
and arc voltage at each moment. The local features, like short
circuit and arc extinction, can be observed clearly in dynamic
characteristics. However, the arc stability in welding process cannot be evaluated visually. The probability distribution of voltage
and current is used to characterize the probability N (%) of the
arc voltage and current collected in welding process, respectively.
The arc stability can be assessed using the probability distribution of voltage or current. Current and voltage cyclograms shows
the welding voltage as a function of the welding current intensity. Cyclogrammes are a very uncomplicated and fast presentation
as far as the welding-process stability is concerned. And it is
more obvious to observe the region size of short-circuit area, arc
extinction area and arc burning area, which reects the arc stability in welding process. The arc stability is accessed qualitatively
using the probability distribution and current and voltage cyclograms, while the coefcients of variation of voltage and current
can quanticationally evaluate arc stability. The four indices have
their respective characteristics, so they all are adopted in this
paper.
Although some studies have been conducted regarding the arc
stability in underwater wet welding, the stability of the welding
process in a boric acid solution environment has not yet been studied. In this paper the stability of the arc in the underwater wet
welding process is evaluated through four indices calculated from
the instantaneous values of current and voltage, and the effect of
the boric acid concentration on the arc stability in underwater wet
welding is investigated.

2. Experimental procedures
A bead-on-plate is immersed in aqueous solution at a depth
of 0.5 m in the experimental pool. The base metal is Q235 mild
steel, and its dimensions are 250 mm 60 mm 15 mm. The ller
material is a TiO2 CaF2 CaOSiO2 slag system self-shielded uxcored wire with a diameter of 1.6 mm. The welding process is
performed using a welding power source operating on direct current electrode positive (DCEP) at a nominal current of 190 A, a
nominal arc voltage of 28 V, a traveling speed of 1.5 mm/s, and
a wire extension of 20 mm. The welding power source is SAFFRODIGI@WAVE500, which is operated with a constant wire feed
speed and in constant-voltage mode. An automatic control platform
for underwater welding is used in this experiment.
Prior to the underwater wet welding, a set of concentrates of
boric acid is dissolved into the deionized water in the experiment
pool to explore the effect of boric acid solution on the underwater welding process. Four different concentrations of boric acid,

i.e., 0 ppm, 10,000 ppm, 20,000 ppm, and 40,000 ppm, are used;
40,000 ppm is the saturation concentration of boric acid at room
temperature.
To quantitatively determine the arc stability, a real-time electrical signal real-time acquisition system is successfully established.
As shown in Fig. 1, the system consists of a Hall current sensor (LT
508-S6), a Hall voltage sensor (LV 25-P), a data acquisition card
(USB6210), and a computer. The instantaneous values of current
and voltage in the welding process can be converted into a 010 V
voltage signal through Hall sensors, and the voltage signal can then
be processed and transformed into digital information using the
data acquisition card and stored in the computer. The parameters
of the electrical signal acquisition system are shown in Table 1.
The procedures for signal acquisition and processing are written in
LABVIEW.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Dynamic characteristics
Fig. 2 shows the dynamic characteristics of the welding voltage and current, which are shown with the instantaneous values
of current and voltage in a randomly selected 0.5 s period. The arc
voltage and welding current uctuate considerably, which reects
the poor stability of the underwater wet welding process. The
arc voltage will unexpectedly drop to a lower value (less than
the self-dened threshold of 15 V, which is dened to be a critical value for short-circuit voltage according to a large number of
experiments) at some moment in all groups of welding experiments and then will return to the original state after a period of
time.
During the process of droplet growth and metal transfer, when
the droplet touches the molten pool, a short-circuit condition is
formed. The arc shortens, and the arc voltage instantly decreases.
After the metal transfer, the arc returns to its original length and
the arc voltage returns to its original value. These are typical characteristics of the short-circuit transition in all welding processes.
However, two different characteristics of the short-circuit transition will be observed when the waveform of the short-circuit
transfer is magnied, as shown in Fig. 3. The arc voltage decreases
to its minimum value and remains there for a period of time, as
shown in Fig. 3(a) on line AB. Consequently, the arc voltage under
the short-circuit voltage threshold, which is dened to be 15 V,
is maintained for a long period of time (approximately 7 ms), as
shown in Fig. 3(a) on line CD. However, in another waveform of
the short-circuit transfer, there is a shorter time (approximately
3 ms) when the arc voltage is lower than the short-circuit voltage
threshold, as shown in Fig. 3(b) on line FG, due to no pause at the
minimum voltage value. The short-circuit transfer can therefore be
divided into two models, namely, the long-periodic short-circuit
model and the short-periodic short-circuit model, according to the
duration for which the arc voltage is lower than the short-circuit
voltage threshold.
3.2. Probability distribution of voltage
The probability N (%) of the arc voltage is characterized using
the probability distribution of the voltage, as shown in Fig. 4.
The characteristic double hump shape is observed in four welding experiments, indicating the short-circuit transition exists in all
welding processes. This phenomenon is in agreement with the analysis based on the dynamic characteristics of current and voltage.
In the probability density distribution, the proportion of the
short-circuit process within the entire test process is indicated by
the area of the region of the small hump. In addition, the more

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247

Table 1
Parameters of the electrical signal acquisition system
Accuracy

Linearity

Maximum sample frequency

Measurement range of current

Measurement range of voltage

0.6%

0.2%

100 kHz

0500 A

0200 V

Fig. 3. Oscillograms of two types of short-circuit models: (a) long-periodic short-circuit model and (b) short-periodic short-circuit model.

Fig. 4. Probability distribution of voltage with varying concentrations of boric acid: (a) 0 ppm, (b) 10,000 ppm, (c) 20,000 ppm, and (d) 40,000 ppm.

intense and narrower large hump implies that the uctuation of


the arc voltage is smaller and the arc stability is superior, and vice
versa. A comparison of the probability density distributions of the

arc voltage in the four welding experiments is shown in Fig. 5. The


region of the small hump increases and the large hump becomes
less intense and wider with increasing boric acid concentration.

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Fig. 5. Probability distribution of voltage.

Therefore, the arc stability in the welding process deteriorates with


increasing boric acid concentration.

3.3. Current and voltage cyclograms


Cyclograms show the voltage as a function of the current. The
current and voltage cyclograms of underwater wet welding in different boric acid solutions are shown in Fig. 6. It can be observed
that there are three regions in every cycloram, i.e., short-circuit
area, arc extinction area and arc burning area. This result indicates
that a certain degree of arc extinction and short circuit exists in all
welding test processes. In addition, it can be observed that, with
increasing boric acid concentration, the arc burning area becomes
more extensive and dispersive, and the intensity of the working
point in the short-circuit area and arc extinction area strengthen
signicantly, which indicates that the proportion of short circuit
and arc extinction increases.
To accurately and clearly present the uctuation of the arc signal
in the entire welding process, a further analysis of the welding current and voltage is conducted on the computer. The proportion of
the arc extinction time, short-circuit time and unstable arc burning
time (the sum of the fault arc and short-circuit time) is calculated
using a short-circuit voltage threshold of 15 V and an arc extinction
voltage threshold of 50 V, as shown in Fig. 7. The proportion of the
unstable arc burning time increases with the boric acid concentration. Therefore, the arc stability of the welding process deteriorates
with the increasing boric acid concentration.

3.4. Coefcients of variation of voltage and current


The coefcient of variation is the ratio between the standard
deviation and average of a set of data, and it can be used to easily and intuitively judge the degree of dispersion of a set of data.
Therefore, a greater coefcient of variation value of the voltage and
current corresponds to a more severe degree of uctuation of the
arc voltage and welding current in the welding process. As shown
in Fig. 8, the coefcients of variation of the voltage and current
increase with the concentration of the boric acid solution. The uctuations of the arc voltage and welding current are more severe,
and the welding arc burning gradually deteriorates with increasing
boric acid concentration, which is consistent with the aforementioned conclusion.

3.5. Discussion
The results of the four methods for determining arc stability,
i.e., dynamic characteristics, probability distribution of voltage and
current, current and voltage cyclograms, and coefcients of variation of voltage and current, all show that the arc stability in the
underwater wet welding process worsens with increasing boric
acid concentration.
As shown in Fig. 3, the short-circuiting transfer can be divided
into the long-periodic short-circuit model and the short-periodic
short-circuit model according to the electrical signal analysis. To
verify the existence of the two forms of short-circuit models, the
welding process is lmed using a high-speed X-ray imaging system. The results indicate that there two forms of short-circuit
models, as shown in Figs. 9 and 10. In Fig. 9(a) (t = 4.4620 s), the
droplet contacts with the molten pool, and then at 4.4715 s, the
droplet is dropped from the wire end and transfers into the molten
pool. There are 7.5 ms in total, which is the long-periodic shortcircuit model. The long-periodic short-circuit model is induced by
the connection of the droplet and molten pool surface, which was
named as surface tension transfer mode in the study of Guo et al.
(2015a, b). In Fig. 10, from wire tip contacting with the molten pool
(t = 2.2585 s) to droplet dropping from the wire end (t = 2.2610 s),
it spends 2.5 ms, which is consistent with the characteristic of the
short-periodic short-circuit model. And it is induced by the connection of wire tip and molten pool surface, which was named as
solid short circuit transfer mode in the study of Guo et al. (2015a,
b). Hence, the two short-circuit models are deemed to both exists
in the welding process.
The probability statistics of the two types of short-circuit models were determined in the underwater wet welding process with
varying concentrations of boric acid solution. As shown in Fig. 11,
it is apparent that the probability of the long-periodic shortcircuit model increases with the concentration of the boric acid
solution. The increased probability of the long-periodic shortcircuit model will cause the average short-circuit time of the
entire welding process to increase, and the arc stability will
worsen.
Due to the nature of the underwater wet welding process, the
arc stability will be affected by the size and rising velocity of the
bubbles produced in the welding process, which is determined by
the force on the bubble. In the underwater wet welding process, the
solution surface tension (Fs ) and buoyancy (Fb ) act on the bubble.
The surface tension prevents the bubble from innitely growing

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249

Fig. 6. Current and voltage cyclograms with varying concentrations of boric acid: (a) 0 ppm, (b) 10,000 ppm, (c) 20,000 ppm, and (d) 40,000 ppm.

Fig. 7. Dependence of arc abnormal burning on concentration of boric acid solution.

after its formation. The studies of Nakath et al. (2013) suggest that
boric acid, as a superior surfactant, plays a signicant role in reducing the solution surface tension. Therefore, with increases in the
boric acid concentration, the solution surface tension decreases,
which makes the bubbles form and grow more easily. The buoyancy
force is calculated as follows:
Fb = gV

(1)

where  is the density of solution. As is well-known, the density of the solution increases with the concentration of boric acid
dissolved in water. The buoyancy force increases, which causes the
bubble to rise more quickly. Consequently, the formation of bubbles is easier, and the rising velocity of the bubble is greater, which
means that the amount of bubbles generated dramatically increases
with increasing boric acid concentration. Moreover, the bubbles

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Fig. 8. Dependence of the coefcients of variation of voltage and current on the boric acid solution concentration.

Fig. 9. Long-periodic short-circuit transfer.

burst periodically, which perturbs the welding arc and the water
environment around the weld zone. More bubbles correspond to
more perturbation and a worse arc stability.
In addition, the frequency of the droplet transfer and the size
of the droplet have an effect on the arc stability in the welding
process. In general, a slower droplet transfer frequency will cause
larger droplets to be formed on the wire end. Larger droplets induce
more severe perturbations when the droplets are transferred into
the molten pool. The frequency of the droplet transfer and the size
of the droplet are determined by the force acting on the droplet.
A previous study (Guo et al., 2015a,b) showed that the resistance
acting on the droplet increases with the boric acid concentration.
Under this resistance, the frequency of the droplet transfer is slower
and the size of the droplet is greater. Therefore, the arc stability in the welding process deteriorates with increasing boric acid
concentration.

4. Conclusions
(1) There is a certain degree of arc extinction and short circuit
in the process of underwater wet welding. According to the
short circuit duration, the short circuit can be divided into
the long-periodic short-circuit model and the short-periodic
short-circuits model, and the proportion of the long-periodic
short-circuit model increases with the concentration of the
boric acid solution.
(2) The results of the four methods for determining arc stability,
i.e., dynamic characteristics, probability distribution of voltage
and current, current and voltage cyclograms, and coefcients
of variation of the voltage and current, all show that the arc
stability in the underwater wet welding process deteriorates
with increasing boric acid concentration.
(3) The worse arc stability in the underwater wet welding process is caused by the longer average short-circuit time in the

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251

Fig. 10. Short-periodic short-circuit transfer.

Fig. 11. Proportion of long-periodic short-circuit transfer and short-periodic short-circuit transfer of welding in boric acid solutions with different concentrations.

welding process, more bubbles, a fast transition frequency and


larger droplets in the welding process with increasing boric acid
concentration.

Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the nancial support provided
by the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of
China (Grant No. 2013CB035502), the Shandong Provincial Science
and Technology Development Plan (Grant No. 2014GGX103033)
and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant No.
2014M561343).

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