Abstract:
The Gas Metal Arc Welding process is widely used in many appliances because of its
versatility. The change of shape and dimensions that occur after welding is known as
distortion that leads to undesirable results. And to overcome this, it requires reducing the
distortion within the limits. A large number of resources are used recently for reworking the
weld. But it causes higher cost of production and delay for completing the work. Higher
amount of residual stresses may generate if the distortion is controlled physically during
welding. This work is aimed to predict and reduce distortion with optimization of GMAW
process parameters such as welding current, welding speed and wire feed rate. Using three
levels three factors full factorial method, effects of process parameters can be determined and
the parameters can be optimized. Simufact Welding V6.0 Software is used in this work for
finite element analysis of welding distortion. A confirmatory test has also been performed for
validation of the result obtained by Simufact Welding V6.0. Prediction helps mitigate the cost
of experiments and provides better accuracy for obtaining the results such as, temperature,
heat distribution, stress distribution and distortion.
