Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347

www.springerlink.com/content/1738-494x(Print)/1976-3824(Online)
DOI 10.1007/s12206-017-0234-x

Effect of process parameters on ferrite number in cladding of

317L stainless steel by pulsed MIG welding†
R. Prabhu1,* and T. Alwarsamy2
1
Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Viswa Maha Vidyalaya University, Enathur, Kancheepuram, 631561, Tamil Nadu, India
2
Government College of Technology, Coimbatore-13, Tamil Nadu, India

(Manuscript Received May 27, 2015; Revised March 15, 2016; Accepted October 26, 2016)

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Abstract

In the current scenario cladding process are used in many engineering industries to enhance the corrosion resistance surface and wear
resistance of the base material in chloride environment. Cladding of stainless steel results in formation of ferrite number content on clad-
ded surface, which deleterious the material properties. The present investigation address the effect of process parameters on ferrite num-
ber during austenitic stainless steel 317L cladding by Pulsed Metal inert gas (MIG) welding process. Ferrite number was measured by
using Fisher’s ferrite scope. Response surface methodology (RSM) based central composite rotatable design were approached to predict
and develop the mathematical model for process parameters such as welding current, welding speed and contact tip to work distance on
ferrite number. From the analysis of variance technique it is found that the developed mathematical model was significant. The devel-
oped mathematical model is useful to control and determine the ferrite number content in austenitic stainless steel cladding. The direct
and interaction effects of input process parameters are presented graphically.
Keywords: Ferrite number; Pulse cladding; Prediction; Response surface methodology; Stainless steel
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Amos Robert et al. [8] investigated the behaviour of process

1. Introduction
parameters during stainless steel cladding they concluded that
Austenitic stainless steels are widely used in a variety of stand of distance is the dominant parameter to decide the bead
product forms for architectural consumer and industrial appli- appearance than with diffusion temperature and welding speed.
cation because of their excellent corrosion and oxidant resis- Palani and Murugan [9] carried out the optimisation study
tance however these are susceptible to corrosion during weld- of weld bead geometry for stainless steel cladding deposited
ing [1]. Corrosion is a problem which dwindles the steel struc- by Flux cored arc welding. They found that percentage of
ture leads to failure. Though it cannot be eradicated it can be dilution increases the pitting corrosion which is initiated by
reduced to certain extent. Corrosion resistance protective layer presence of ferrite content during cladding. Rho et al. [10]
is formed over the base metal by a process called weld clad- studied the effects of delta ferrite content on the 304L stainless
ding [2]. steel during continuous low-cycle fatigue test with different
The microstructure of austenitic stainless steel shows a delta temperatures. They concluded that the fatigue crack was initi-
ferrite phase during cladding generally, delta ferrite phase ated by delta ferrite on the surface.
leads to decremented effect on corrosion resistance [3]. Sudhakaran et al. [11] investigated the effect of process pa-
Among fusion welding process pulsed metal inert gas welding rameters on ferrite content of 202 grade stainless steel using
has been widely used for cladding austenitic stainless steel due response surface methodology in gas tungsten arc welding
to several advantages like easy to control the process parame- process in that they used Delong diagram and ferrite scope to
ters, to produce good bead dimensions, minimising the per- measure the ferrite number. Lia et al. [12] focused on the for-
centage of dilution, less spatter, fumes and high metal deposi- mation and microstructural evolution of delta ferrite phase in
tion rate [4, 5]. To obtain the better quality welds, it is neces- SAVE12 steel. Further they demonstrated that the formation
sary to have a full control over the relevant process parameters of delta ferrite was due to the high content of ferrite forming
to get the required bead geometry dimensions [6, 7]. alloy elements.
*
Corrosion resistance of the base material is mainly depends
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9488458583
E-mail address: prabhu9495@gmail.com
on the chemical composition of filler material during cladding.
†
Recommended by Associate Editor Young Whan Park The more amount of the ferrite number results in poor mate-
© KSME & Springer 2017
1342 R. Prabhu and T. Alwarsamy / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347

rial property. Hence it is very important to obtain the optimal Table 1. Chemical composition of base material and filler wire
number of ferrite number during cladding [13]. In this row (Weight percent).
Kannan and Murugan [14] predicted the ferrite number of Materials C Si Mn P S Cr Ni Cu Mo Fe
duplex stainless steel cladded metals by using response sur- Base
face methodology. 0.23 0.31 0.93 0.05 0.02 - - - - 98.46
material
The mathematical models were developed to predict the Filler
delta ferrite content during cladding of austenitic stainless 0.03 0.65 2.5 0.04 0.03 20 15 0.75 4 57
wire
steel and duplex stainless steel using response surface meth-
odology [15, 16]. Vasudevan et al. [17] used Bayesian neural Table 2. Process variables and experimental levels.
network to develop the mathematical for the prediction of
delta ferrite content in stainless steel weld. Process Levels
Symbols
parameters -1.682 -1 0 +1 +1.682
Rao et al. [18] studied the effect of process parameters on
bead geometry during pulsed gas metal arc welding using Welding
I 190 200 215 230 240
Taguchi method. Mathematic models were developed using current
multiple regression analysis and validated the adequacy. Fur- Welding
S 170 180 195 210 220
ther it was found that predicted models for the responses are speed
within reasonable accuracy. Contact tip to
N 17 18 20 21 22
Pal et al. [19] made a study on optimization of process pa- work distance
rameters for quality characteristic by using grey-based Ta-
guchi method. It was found that the process parameter has solid wire of diameter 1.2 mm was used as filler wire and low
more influence on quality characteristic by ANOVA. Re- carbon structural steel IS: 2062 of 20 mm thickness plate was
sponse surface methodology based central composite rotatable used as base material. The chemical composition of the base
design in design expert software technique is mostly used for material and filler wire are shown in Table 1.
developing the experimental design matrix. It is the simplest
method for developing a mathematical model and correlate
2.2 Experimental methods
relationship between process parameters and response. It is
useful to discuss the main effect and interaction effects [20- There are various methods to conduct the experiments such
22]. as Taguchi method [19], grey relational analysis, orthogonal
The above literatures clearly show that identifying and se- array, full factorial design [20], and artificial intelligence [17],
lecting the process parameters for the cladding process is chal- face centered composite design and central composite ro-
lenging one for many research works. However response sur- tatable design [11, 22]. Response surface methodology based
face methodology based central composite rotatable design central composite rotatable design technique was used to de-
technique was used by various researchers for developing sign the experimental matrix to perform the experiments. This
mathematical model and analysing the process parameters. design is generally used by maximum number of researchers
Hence the study related to prediction of ferrite number in for obtaining minimum number of experimental runs with
Pulsed MIG welding was not that much discussed. good accuracy and developing the second order polynomial
There was various attempts have been made to develop the regression equation [11, 15]. Based on the literature analysis,
mathematical model for prediction of ferrite number by using the three factors are considered for this present investigation
nickel and chromium alloy composition. It was found that such as welding current (I), welding speed (S) and contact tip
very few works was discussed about prediction of ferrite to work distance (N). Bead-on-plate type welding were per-
number based on process parameters. formed with changing the process parameters values and ex-
In this present investigation, the effects of process parame- amine the appearance of the bead process parameters levels
ters on ferrite number in Pulsed MIG welding during 317L are selected for this investigation, their upper limits and lower
solid stainless steel wire cladded on structural steel plate IS: limits of each process parameters are fixed respectively. The
2062 was studied by following approach. upper limits and lower limits of a process parameters was
By conducting the weld cladding of 317L austenitic stain- coded as +1.682 and -1.682 respectively, the coded values of
less steel onto structural steel IS: 2062. Preparing the speci- the intermediate levels being calculated from the Eq. (1)
men as per metallurgical procedure and ferrite number was shown in Table 2 [9].
measured by using Fishers ferrite scope. By developing the
quadratic polynomial equation and analysing their effects.
(1)
2. Experimentation
2.1 Experimental materials
where Xi is the required coded value of a variable X, X is any
In this investigation austenitic stainless steel AISI 317L of value of the variable from X min to X max, X min is the lower
 R. Prabhu and T. Alwarsamy / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347 1343

Table 3. Design matrix and ferrite number values.

Std Run Trails Avg

I S N FN
exp exp 1 2 3 4 5 values
1 3 -1 -1 -1 0.8 0.84 0.81 0.82 0.83 0.82
2 8 1 -1 -1 0.86 0.88 0.87 0.89 0.9 0.88
3 5 -1 1 -1 0.64 0.63 0.52 0.6 0.61 0.6
4 20 1 1 -1 0.57 0.58 0.62 0.61 0.57 0.59
Fig. 1. Typical view of cladded specimen. 5 6 -1 -1 1 0.56 0.58 0.6 0.61 0.55 0.58
6 7 1 -1 1 0.84 0.8 0.82 0.78 0.81 0.81
7 9 -1 1 1 0.62 0.6 0.59 0.65 0.64 0.62
8 10 1 1 1 0.81 0.84 0.83 0.82 0.85 0.83
9 11 -1.682 0 0 0.73 0.75 0.77 0.74 0.71 0.74
10 4 1.682 0 0 0.97 0.99 0.92 1.04 0.98 0.98
11 2 0 -1.682 0 0.73 0.74 0.75 0.72 0.71 0.73
12 15 0 1.682 0 0.54 0.54 0.52 0.6 0.55 0.55
13 14 0 0 -1.682 0.52 0.54 0.51 0.58 0.55 0.54
Fig. 2. Mirror finished specimens for ferrite number measurement. 14 17 0 0 1.682 0.59 0.6 0.58 0.57 0.61 0.59
15 1 0 0 0 0.58 0.54 0.52 0.6 0.55 0.56
level of the variable, X max is the highest level of the variable 16 13 0 0 0 0.5 0.54 0.52 0.6 0.55 0.55
the first 8 conditions were derived from factorial experimental 17 18 0 0 0 0.57 0.59 0.6 0.61 0.55 0.58
design matrix (23 = 8). All the variables at an intermediate 18 12 0 0 0 0.6 0.58 0.59 0.55 0.53 0.57
level of 0 constitute the 6 center point while, the combination 19 16 0 0 0 0.57 0.59 0.6 0.61 0.55 0.58
of each process variable between a lower level of −1.682 and
20 19 0 0 0 0.58 0.54 0.52 0.6 0.55 0.56
a higher level of +1.682 with the other four variables at the
intermediate levels constitute the 6 star points totally 20 runs
are there [9, 22]. and surface texture [11, 13]. It was then polished with etching
solution and made as mirror finish by following metallurgical
2.3 Experimental procedure for cladding procedure [12]. Fischer FERRITESCOPE_MP30 were used
to measure the ferrite number on cladded specimen [9, 11, 13,
The deposition was performed as per the design matrix by 14], measurement ranges from 0.1 to 110 ferrite number or 0.1
using Lincoln power wave 455 Pulsed MIG welding machine. to 80 % ferrite in austenitic and duplex stainless steel. A sche-
A programmable logic controlled manipulator was used to set matic arrangement of ferrite scope and specimen are shown in
and control the welding speed uniformly for each run. Fig. 3. Before measuring the ferrite number the instrument has
The contact tip to work distance is also adjusted with help to be calibrated according to existing prepared specimen and
of the manipulator and position of the torch is exactly main- ferrite form by comparing with ANSI/AWS A4.2M/A4.2:
tained at 90° throughout the experiments. Base material was 1997 [11, 16] standard specimen. The values are measured on
prepared as per the required dimensions such as 300 x 200 x the prepared surface of the 20 specimens and in each speci-
20 mm form structural steel plate IS: 2062. Top surface of the men there are five values are measured along the axis of the
base material was cleaned with steel wire brush and emery deposition and averages of these measured values are tabu-
sheets to free it from dirt and rust layer. A gas mixture of Ar- lated in Table 3.
gon and Carbon dioxide (95 % and 5 %) are supplied through-
out the experiments at the flow rate of 20 lit/min as shielding
2.5 Development of mathematical model
gas. The base material, filler material and dimensions of the
specimen is indicated in Fig 1, weld cladded mirror finished Ferrite number (Y) of cladded stainless steel is the response
cladded specimens are shown in Fig. 2. function of process parameters such as welding current, weld-
ing speed and contact tip to work distance can be expressed by
2.4 Experimental procedure for specimen preparation and Eq. (2) [20-22].
ferrite number measurement
Y = (I, S, N) (2)
The cladded plates are cross-sectioned at the midpoint to
prepare the test specimen, the top surface of the specimens are where Y : The response function,
grounded as flat surface without disturbing the bead geometry I : The welding current amps,
1344 R. Prabhu and T. Alwarsamy / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347

Table 4. Calculated β coefficients values for ferrite number model. Table 5. ANOVA table for ferrite number.

Process parameters Polynominal coefficients Coefficients values p-value

Source SS DoF MS F value
Constant β0 47.5088 Prob > F

I β1 -0.2332 Model 0.33219 9 0.03691 119.279 < 0.0001 Significant

S β2 -0.1058 I 0.05847 1 0.05847 188.969 < 0.0001

N Β3 -1.1966 S 0.04149 1 0.04149 134.074 < 0.0001

IxS β12 -5E-05 N 1.5E-08 1 1.5E-08 4.9E-05 0.9946

IxN β13 0.0022 IS 0.00101 1 0.00101 3.27205 0.1006

SxN β23 0.0032 IN 0.01901 1 0.01901 61.4419 < 0.0001

IxI β11 0.00048 SN 0.04061 1 0.04061 131.246 < 0.0001

2
SxS β 22 0.00013 I 0.16591 1 0.16591 536.167 < 0.0001

NxN β 33 0.0029 S2 0.01255 1 0.01255 40.5703 < 0.0001

N2 0.00062 1 0.00062 1.98823 0.1889
Residual 0.00309 10 0.00031
Not
Lack of fit 0.00236 5 0.00047 3.21962 0.1126
significant
Pure error 0.00073 5 0.00015
Cor total 0.33528 19

Eq. (4).

Ferrite number = + 47.5088 - 0.2332 * I -0.1058 *

S - 1.1966 * N -5E-05* I * S + 0.00217 * I * N +
Fig. 3. Schematic arrangement of ferrite scope and specimen. 0.00317 * S* N + 0.00048 * I2 + 0.00013 * S2 +
0.0029 * N2. (4)

S : The welding speed mm/min and
N : The contact tip to work distance mm.
Relationship between the response and the process variable
are unknown. In order to study the main effect and interaction
of the process parameters a second order polynomial response
surface can be fitted into the following Eq. (3) [21, 22].
k k
y = b 0 + å b i xi + å b ii xi2 + åå b ij xi x j + e
i =1 i =1 i j
i≠j
where βo is the free term of the regression equation.
The coefficients of β1, β2 and β3 are linear terms.
The coefficients of β11, β22 and β33 are the quadratic terms.
The coefficients of β12, β13 and β23 are the interaction terms.
2.6 Calculating the coefficients of the models
The values of the β coefficients in the second order poly-
nomial equation are calculated by using design expert soft-
ware and coefficients values are tabulated in Table 4.
3.1 Validation of developed mathematical model
From the above mathematical model, the effects of process
parameters on ferrite number were examined. The Eq. (4) it is
clear that the positive values of the polynomial coefficients
increases and negative values decreases the response. Analysis
of variance technique was further used to validate the ade-
quacy of the developed mathematical model. The F-value of
(3) 119.28 implies the model is significant at 95 % of confident
level. To check the goodness of the fitted model the coeffi-
cient of determination R2 and adjusted coefficient of determi-
nation R2 are calculated. The value of calculated R2 should lie
on 0-1 accordingly R2 is 0.99 it is very closer to 1 indicated
that the developed model is good. Adjusted coefficient of
determination R2 is 0.98 which is high nearer to coefficient of
determination R2 0.9908 agrees that model is adequate it was
shown in Table 5. The coefficient of variation and adequate
precision ratio are found 2.65 and 33.986, respectively. The
coefficient of variation is less than 5 and adequate precision
ratio is greater than 4.
3.2 Scatter diagram

Further the validity of developed regression models are

3. Development of final mathematical model
validated by constructing scatter diagram. A typical scatter
The final mathematical model in actual variable form are diagram for the ferrite number was shown in Fig. 4. The scat-
determined by following above procedure and represented as ter diagram shows that the predicated values and measured
 R. Prabhu and T. Alwarsamy / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347 1345

Table 6. Conformation test parameters.

Contact tip
Welding Welding Predicated Measured
No to work Error %
current speed FN FN
distance
1 212.55 202.7 19.46 0.53791 0.55138 2.50413
2 207.89 198.02 20.15 0.54783 0.56771 3.62886
3 209.83 201.08 18.91 0.53662 0.53210 0.84231
4 217.53 205.16 18.93 0.53467 0.54961 2.79424

Fig. 5. Effect of welding current on Ferrite number.

Fig. 4. Normal probability of residuals for Ferrite number.

values of ferrite number are very closer to each other which

indicating the developed regression model an almost perfect Fig. 6. Effect of welding speed on Ferrite number.
fit [12, 15, 16].

4. Conformation test
The conformation test was conducted to evaluate the devel-
oped polynomial equation Eq. (4). The three conformation test
run were conducted with different combination of process
parameters predicted from software. The ferrite number was
measured and differences in predicted and measured values
are calculated by using error calculation equation Eq. (5). The
values are tabulated in Table 6.
Fig. 7. Effect of contact tip to work distance on Ferrite number.
Measured value - Predicted value
% Error = * 100 . (5)
Predicted value 5.2 Effect of welding speed on ferrite number

In Fig. 6, it is clear that there is continuous decrease in fer-

5. Results and discussion
RSM based central composite rotatable design was used to
develop the mathematical model and predict the effect of
process parameters in this investigation. The direct effect and
interaction effects of process parameters on ferrite number are
presented graphically in Figs. 5-7.
5.1 Effect of welding current on Ferrite number
Fig. 5 shows that an increase in welding current decrease
the ferrite number up to the mid value of the welding current
level, thereafter there is sudden increase in ferrite number.
This is mainly attributed to the fact that at higher current level
the heat input to the base metal is higher which increases the
ferrite number.
rite number along with all the levels of welding speed, hence
when welding speed increases the deposition of the filler ma-
terial also decreases thus results in reducing the ferrite content.
5.3 Effect of contact tip to work distance on ferrite number
The direct effect of contact tip to work distance on ferrite
number was shown in Fig. 7. It does not affect the response in
any levels which shows that it is an insignificant factor for
ferrite number measurement.22.
5.4 Interaction effect of welding current and welding speed
on ferrite number
The interaction effects of welding current and welding
1346 R. Prabhu and T. Alwarsamy / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (3) (2017) 1341~1347
Fig. 8. 3D Surface plot showing an interaction effect of welding cur-
rent and welding speed on ferrite number.
Fig. 9. 3D Surface plot showing an interaction effects of Welding
speed and contact tip to work distance on Ferrite number.
speed on ferrite number are shown in Fig. 8. It is clear that at
lower level of the welding current with lower level of welding
speed the ferrite number was considerably at mid value of the
graph. But when the welding current increases there are
downstream and rapid upstream in ferrite number was ob-
served. However, when the welding current increases, the
melting rate and deposition rate of filler material also in-
creases. The weld pool which gives enough of time for ferrous
material to dominate alloying element by diffusion and the
ferrous materials occupies top surfaces of the cladded surface
to increase ferrite content. On the other hand it was noticed
that welding speed also plays an important role to control the
ferrite number by increasing their levels.
5.5 Interaction effect of welding speed and contact tip to
work distance on ferrite number
It is evident that the ferrite number was drastically de-
creases with increase in welding speed as compared to weld-
ing speed (Fig. 9). Because at low levels of welding speed the
axial or longitudinal movement of the nozzle is very slow at
the same time the contact tip to work distance is also at lower
level as it is close to the base material. Hence both the values
are at low level, the cushioning effect of the weld zone in-
creases the penetration of the filler material. The increase in
penetration causes increases in ferrite number. But when
welding speed increases there in no cushioning on the weld
zone which drastically decreases the ferrite number without
considering the contact tip to work distance.
6. Conclusion
·A five-level, three factor design matrix based on central
composite rotatable design approach was used for the
development of mathematical models to predict the fer-
rite number for cladding of austenitic stainless steel 317L
deposited using pulsed MIG welding process.
·The predicted values using developed model as well as
experimental values are closer to each other.
·Welding current and welding speed are the most signifi-
cant factor in prediction of ferrite number than with the
contact tip to work distance.
·The significant factors are identified by ANOVA. The
model values are adequate with 95 % of confidence level.
·Ferrite number decreases constantly with the increase in
welding speed due to the reduced deposition of filler ma-
terial over the base metal. However, the ferrite number
increases with the increase in welding current.
Nomenclature------------------------------------------------------------------------
I : Welding current
S : Welding speed
N : Contact tip to work distance
FN : Ferrite number
SS : Sum of squares
DoF : Degree of freedom
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R. Prabhu graduated in Mechanical
Engineering from Anna University,
Chennai, India in 2005 and received his
Masters in Manufacturing Engineering
from Anna University, Coimbatore,
India in 2009. He is currently an Assis-
tant Professor in the Department of Me-
chanical Engineering in Sri Chandrasek-
harendra Saraswathi Viswa Maha Vidyalaya University Kan-
chipuram, India. His research is in welding of dissimilar met-
als stainless steel and low carbon steel, corrosion analysis,
wear behavior of cladded surface study and currently extend-
ing his knowledge by undergoing Ph.D. studies in pulsed MIG
welding.