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Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 9914–9918 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings

ICEMS 2016

Performance of activated TIG welding in 304 austenitic

stainless steel welds
Hemant kumar,a* N K Singha
Department of mechanical engineering Indian school of Mines Dhanbad-826004, India

Abstract

Six different types of oxides Cr2O3, FeO, Fe2O3, MoO3, SiO2, and Al2O3 were used to investigate the effect of oxide flux on weld
morphology, microstructure and mechanical properties in 304 austenitic stainless steel welded joints. An autogenous TIG
welding was used to join 8mm thick austenitic stainless steel plate and a thin layer of oxide was applied prior to welding. The
results indicated that there was a significant increase in penetration depth on using metal oxides but Al2O3 does not give
satisfactory result. The microstructures were found to be different on using different oxides. The mechanical properties of the
weld were almost similar to that of parent metal.

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering and Material
Sciences (ICEMS-2016).

Keywords:Activated flux, autogenous TIG welding, penetration depth, heat affected zone;

1. Introduction

Gas Tungsten Arc welding (GTAW) or Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding has been widely used in metal
fabrication process. Almost all metals and their alloy can be welded by this process but it is preferred to weld hard-
to-weld metals like Al, Mg, Ti, Stainless steel etc. [1]. It is one of the arc welding methods which use non
consumable tungsten electrode and inert shielding gas (Ar or He) to protect weld from oxidation [2]. Straight

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91-840-970-6402;

E-mail address:hemant08m17@gmail.com

2214-7853© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering and Material Sciences (ICEMS-
2016).
 Hemant Kumar/ Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 9914–9918 9915

polarity (DCEN) is preferred to weld metals having high melting point like Titanium, Stainless Steel and reverse
polarity (DCEP) is for metals having low melting points like Al, Mg etc. The quality of the weld, its pin point
control and its reliability makes it persistent in the welding field till date. In spite of having so many advantages it
has severe disadvantage of shallow penetration depth. In stainless steel plate it is hardly up to 3mm [3]. The first
attempt toward achieving more penetration was done by E.O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding in 1966 [4]. They
named it as activated TIG welding (A-TIG) welding and found that the application thin layer of flux prior to weld
increases the penetration up to three times. But they did not disclose the exact composition of that flux due to
commercial reason.The related literatures offers the limited data on the composition of the flux although some of
authors used single component flux [5-7] and some of them used more than one flux [8-9] while some of the
researchers were mixed hydrogen, oxygen or carbon dioxide in shielding gas in different composition to get the
higher penetration [10].All of them were found that there was a significant increase in penetration depth on using
flux.

2. Experimental details

The base metal used in this experiment was 304 austenitic stainless steel and its average chemical composition is
18.21% Cr, 8.09% Ni, 0.01% S, 0.94 Mn, 0.06% C, 0.66% Si, 0.028% P, balance Fe. All the samples were cut in the
size of 150 mm x 50 mm x 8 mm. The base metal contains very negligible amount of sulfur to reduce the effect of
sulfur on penetration. A direct current straight polarity (DCEN) power source (INVERTECH-V260-T) was used.
The TIG torch was fixed on the mechanized system to move the torch with a desirable speed. An air-cooled torch
with a thoriated tungsten electrode (W-2%, 2.4 mm diameter) was used for the welding. The surface of the each
sample was roughly grinded with 200 grit (silicon carbide) abrasive paper followed by acetone cleaning to remove
impurities. Six different oxides were separately mixed with acetone to form paint- like structure and subsequently
manually applied with a paint brush on the plate prior to weld. The welding parameters were current 80-160 A, arc
length 1.5 mm, gas flow rate 10 l/min and welding speed 100 mm/min. After welding the transverse sections were
cut at different locations by wire-EDM (ELECRONICA) for optical examination of bead geometry and
microstructure. After sectioning mounting, grinding, and polishing to a 0.05 µm finish was done followed by
etching (50 ml HCL +50 ml water+ 10 g CuSO4). Each sample was examined by scanning electron microscope
(ZEISS SUPRA 55) and optical microscope (OLYMPUS BX51M). The hardness test was done on the Vickers
micro hardness tester (ECONOMET VH-MD).

3. Results and discussion

3.1 Effect of current on penetration

Fig. 1 shows that in conventional TIG welding when we increase the current from 80 A to 140 A penetration
depth increases but further increment in current does not increase penetration although weld width increases. The
maximum penetration was found at 140 A. At this current when we use a thin layer of flux the penetration increases
significantly.

Fig. 1 Penetration depth at different current in C-TIG welding

9916 Hemant Kumar/ Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 9914–9918

Fig. 2 shows that the penetration depth increases up to almost three times when we use different flux prior to
weld at 140 A. SiO2 gives the highest penetration depth almost three times but Aluminum oxide does not give any
satisfactory result.

Fig. 2 Effect on penetration on using (a) Cr2O3, (b) FeO, (C) MoO3, (d) Fe2O3,
(e) SiO2, (f) Al2O3

Fig.3 Show the comparison of penetration depth in C-TIG and A-TIG

3.2 Effect of flux on microstructure

The microstructure of the base metal contains austenite matrix and there was very little change in microstructure
of the weld metal. The microstructure of weld zone of the conventional TIG welding shows a little variation having
some gas defects like porosity. Fig. 3 represents the change in microstructure of the weld on using different oxides.
The microstructure of the A-TIG was found to be different because the oxide flux constricts the arc. Hence the heat
 Hemant Kumar/ Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 9914–9918 9917

density increases and thus temperature of the weld pool was different in different cases. Thus the cooling rate was
different in different cases thus the microstructure was found to be different.

Fig. 4 Microstructure of (a) base metal of C-TIG, (b) weld zone of C-TIG, and weld zone using flux (c) Cr2O3,
(d) FeO, (e) MoO3, (f) Fe2O3, (g) SiO2, (h) Al2O3

3.3 Effect of flux on mechanical properties

The hardness measurements were performed on all the specimens and there was a common pattern of variation of
hardness among all those samples. The hardness of base metal (BM), heat affected zone (HAZ) and fusion zone
(FZ) were measured for all samples. The diminution of the hardness from base metal to fusion zone was found due
to the micro structural changes. The hardness of the HAZ was lower due to larger size of grain. The observed
hardness of the base metal, HAF, FZ was 319 HV, 198 HV and 232 HV respectively. The hardness of A-TIG
welded samples was almost same as the conventional TIG samples and the variations in hardness values were less
than 5%.

4. Conclusion
• All the oxide powders increase penetration depth except Al2O3. SiO2 gives maximum penetration and
Al2O3 does not increase penetration while it increases weld width which is not desirable.
• The microstructure of the weld of C-TIG and A-TIG was completely different due to the difference in
cooling rate.
• The hardness values were different for BM, HAZ and FZ but in comparison to C-TIG, A-TIG did not show
any significant change in hardness.

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to acknowledge the Central Research Facility, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad Jharkhand,
India for providing valuable equipments related to research.

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