International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)

Use of Activated Flux For Increasing Penetration In Austenitic

Stainless Steel While Performing GTAW
Prof. A.B. Sambherao
Assistant Professor at Pillai’s Institute of Information Technology, New Panvel, Navi Mumbai
Abstract— Weld penetration has an important impact on
the quality of the welded joint or the weld deposits and hence
is required to be controlled in fabrication, repair and
maintenance work. The depth to width ratio determines the
number of passes that are required to weld a particular
thickness of the material. The TIG welding process is
currently exploited widely for precision joining of those
components, which require controlled heat input. The
primary disadvantages of TIG lie in the limited thickness of
the material which can be welded in a single pass, sensitivity
to some material composition (cast to cast variations) and the
low productivity. An attempt is being made in this research to
investigate the effect of multi component fluxes of specific
oxides on the surface appearance, weld morphology and
retained δ-ferrite content obtained with the tungsten inert gas
(TIG) process applied to the welding of 6mm thick (AISI
316L) austenitic stainless steel plates. The A-GTAW process
which uses activating fluxes to increase weld depth [1]. An
Autogenous Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) process is
applied through a thin layer of activating flux to produce a
bead on plate welded joint. The used oxide fluxes i.e. TiO2,
Fe2O3, SiO2 and Al2O3, are packed in powdered form. The
flux seems to constrict the arc and thereby increase the
current density at the anode spot, resulting in higher weld
depth.
Keywords— Austenitic stainless steel, TIG Welding, Aspect
Ratio, Marangoni, Weld pool convection.
I. INTRODUCTION
Active tungsten inert gas (A-TIG) welding was invented
in the 60s by researchers at the Paton Electric Welding
Institute (PWI) in Ukraine [2]. By applying a thin coating
of an activating flux to the surface of the material before
welding, the A-TIG process can produce a drastic increase
in weld bead penetration. In A-TIG, flux is pasted onto the
surface of the base material and filler wire is used.
To improve the penetration of TIG welding, thorough
analysis has been done A-TIG welding (Active flux TIG
welding) because the weld shape is sensitive to the free
oxygen content in the weld pool. A-GTAW process can
achieve, in a single pass, a full penetration weld in stainless
steel up to 10mm thickness without the use of bevel
preparation and the addition of filler wire. The weldment
aesthetics are observed to be unaffected [3]. Although the
A-TIG welding is still under consideration, the effects of
the oxide flux quantity on the weld penetration showed that
the arc constriction and the reversed Marangoni convection
on the top surface of the weld pool were the main
mechanism for changing the weld shape according to the
experimental investigation. Comparison has been made
between mechanical and metallurgical properties of welds
with flux and without flux. The A-GTAW process has been
exploited to improve production efficiencies in a wide
range of industries, including power generation, chemical,
aerospace and marine manufacturing and in nuclear plant
[4].
II. EXPERIMENTAL WORK
Austenitic Stainless Steel 316L specimens (200mm X
60mm X 6mm) were selected for the welding experimental
tests and its chemical composition after chemical analysis
is shown in Table I.
Three kinds of oxide fluxes, TiO2, Fe2O3 and Al2O3&
their mixture, were used as fluxes which was prepared
along the weld bead.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)
Table I The weld fusion zone was then revealed by etching the
The chemical composition of Austenitic Stainless Steel section with methanolic aqua regia (45ml HCl, 15ml HNO3
AISI 316L COMP % in 1 normal 20ml methanol). The etched weld zone image
was observed at 4X magnification using the Stereographic
C 0.028 Microscope. The outline of the fusion zone image was
analyzed by LEICA software, which takes input as an
Si 0.45 image from LED illumination device (Light Emitting
Diode) that has been developed for stereomicroscopy
Mn 1.22
illumination purposes in industrial and laboratory settings.
Cr 17.0 The parameters like bead width (W), depth of penetration
(D) were obtained from the stereographic analysis. The
Ni 10.1 nugget area (N.A) and the interface region between fused
and diffused zone (C1) were obtained from OLYMPUS
P 0.028 Image Analyzer.
The delta ferrite content of welded plates was
S 0.003 determined using the calibrated Fischer Feritscope MP-30.
A large number of readings were taken on each specimen
Mo 2.08 for finding the average ferrite number.
Co 0.208
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Cu 0.57 From the experimental results, the typical shapes of
welds in TIG and A-TIG welding are obtained as shown in
Nb 0.025 fig. 1 to fig. 8. Figures show that the shapes of the welds
are very different between the conventional TIG and A-
Ti 0.01
TIG welding process. Deeper and narrower weld pool is
obtained in A-TIG welding process compared with the
Fe Bal.
conventional one.
I. Effect of flux on weld pool convection
60mm length bead-on-plate welds were made with a
direct current electrode negative (DCEN) TRANSARC In the conventional TIG welding, the direction of weld
FRONIUS 500 TIG power supply at two different welding pool convection tends to flow from center towards the
speeds i.e. 2.7 mm/s and 3.5 mm/s, three different welding edges, which will result in the more content of melt
currents i.e. 100 A, 150 A & 180 A and welding voltage of distributing near the edges of weld fusion zone than that in
10-14V in both conventional TIG and A-TIG welding. the center. Activating fluxes change the direction of weld
Welding torch was mounted on a variable speed tractor pool convection, therefore content of melt will be more in
guided by rigid rails. the center than that near the edge of weld fusion zone.
The specimens were polished and cleaned with acetone. From the images shown below, it can be concluded that
The flux was formed with mixing one of the oxides TiO 2, addition of TiO2 flux changes the direction of weld pool
Fe2O3 and Al2O3 or their mixture with acetone. This convection
mixture was applied with a paintbrush manually on the top
surface along the weld bead of the specimen before
welding [5].
Both TIG and A-TIG weld shapes can be obtained at the
same time in each trial by using this method to avoid the
discrepancy caused by different welding process TIG and
A-TIG welding with the same welding parameters.

III. METHOD OF ANALYSIS

A longitudinal cross section of weld was cut out and
polished from 300 grit to 1000 grit on SiC paper. Fig 1. Image analyzer photo of weld without flux at 150A current by
keeping 3mm arc gap and 2.7mm/s welding speed.

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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)

Fig 2. Image analyzer photo of weld without flux at 180A current by

keeping 3mm arc gap and 3.5mm/s welding speed. Fig 6. Image analyzer photo of weld with 100% Al2O3 flux at 180A
current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 3.5mm/s welding speed.

Fig 3. Image analyzer photo of weld with 100% TiO2 flux at 150A
current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 2.7mm/s welding speed. Fig 7. Image analyzer photo of weld with60% TiO2 + 40% Fe2O3 flux
at 150A current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 2.7mm/s welding speed

Fig 4. Image analyzer photo of weld with 100% TiO2 flux at 180A
current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 3.5mm/s welding speed. Fig 8. Image analyzer photo of weld with 60% TiO2 + 40% Fe2O3 flux
at 180A current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 3.5mm/s welding speed.

Which is the reversal of Marangoni effect. This resulted

in the increase of weld depth. Since Al2O3 did not
dissociate easily in the weld pool and provide free Oxygen
to increase surface tension temperature gradient, its
addition did not have any significant effect on weld pool
convection. But when TiO2 was added to Fe2O3 in 3:2
weight ratio, both oxides easily dissociate in the fusion
zone. This helped in achieving increase in the depth more
than that when only TiO2 was used.

Fig 5. Image analyzer photo of weld with 100% Al2O3 flux at 150A
current by keeping 3mm arc gap and 2.7mm/s welding speed.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)
The surface tension temperature gradient decreases with
the temperature of the molten metal increase (namely
dσ/dT < 0) and the temperature in the center of the weld
pool is higher than that near the edges, therefore the molten
metal in the center tends to flow toward the edges. When
there is Oxygen in the molten metal, the surface tension
temperature gradient increases with increasing temperature
of the molten metal (namely dσ/dT > 0) [6]. Since the
surface tension of the higher temperature section of the
pool directly under the arc is lower than that of lower
temperature regions near the edges of the weld, the molten
metal near the edges tends to flow towards the center of the
weld. That results in the higher content of weld metal in the
center than that near the edges.
As seen from fig. 1 and fig. 3, keeping welding speed &
welding current same, change of flux to TiO2 resulted in
the increase of weld depth and slight decrease of bead
width. This occurred because of high energy concentration
due to TiO2, which is unstable under the plasma arc. Since
the content of molten metal is directly proportional to
energy concentration, high weld depth and low bead width
were obtained.
II. Effect of flux on aspect ratio
In conventional TIG welding, the flow of molten metal
takes place from center to the edges. Because surface
tension at the center of the weld pool is lower than that at
the edges. This results in less depth and more width of the
weld pool. But when fluxes are added except stable oxides
like Al2O3, the reversal of Marangoni effect occurs and due
to arc constriction, more increase in weld depth and
considerably less decrease in bead width are obtained.
Therefore lower aspect ratios ranging from 0.12 to 0.21
were obtained. When TiO2 flux was used, the surface
tension at the centre of the weld pool became higher than
that near the edges. This led to larger increase in depth and
comparatively lesser increase in width than that when no
flux was used.
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Hence, the aspect ratios were increased by larger amount
ranging from 0.2 to 0.56. Since Al2O3 does not have any
impact on changing the surface tension at the centre of the
weld pool, lesser increase in aspect ratios ranging from
0.13 to 0.38 were achieved. But when TiO2 mixed with
Fe2O3 flux was used, a wide range of aspect ratios from
0.15 to 0.66 were observed. This is due to larger increase in
depth than in width.
Observing from figure 1 to figure 8, Weld depth
obtained was the least amongst all for the weld beads done
without flux. This is because of the Marangoni effect,
which states that the surface tension at the higher
temperature region is lower than that at the lower
temperature.
When TiO2 was applied to the metal, the reversal of
Marangoni effect took place because of free Oxygen
available in the weld pool due to decomposition of TiO2.
This led to more surface tension at the weld pool than that
near the edges. Therefore more weld depth was obtained.
After application of Al2O3, because of its more stability
than TiO2, its decomposition did not occur to much extent.
This resulted in obtaining lesser weld depths than that when
TiO2 was used. More free Oxygen was made available in
the weld pool, when the TiO2 flux in combination with
Fe2O3 was used. This increased the surface tension at the
centre of the weld pool to a large extent, causing the flow
to go from the crown to the core of the weld pool.
On the contrary, application of fluxes has exactly
opposite effect on bead width. Due to constriction of arc,
the width goes on decreasing from without flux to TiO2
flux. But Al2O3 does not provide the constriction of arc due
to its stability under arc, which increases the bead width.
TiO2 added with Fe2O3 flux was used, it constricted the arc
to a larger extent even at higher arc gap because of
instability of both the fluxes under the arc. This led to more
decrease in bead width than that when only TiO2 was used.
The aspect ratios of the welds in aforementioned conditions
are tabulated in table II
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)
Table II V. CONCLUSION
Aspect ratios of the weld in various conditions
A significant increase in penetration (around 300 %) was
Experimental conditions Depth Width Aspect obtained in welds done with a TiO2 activating flux. This
(mm) (mm)
Ratio (D/W) effect is mainly due to not only the arc constriction
produced by the flux and consequent increase in the arc
weld without flux at 1.285 7.05 0.214 force but the reversal of Marangoni convection also. Al2O3
150A current by keeping produced only a small increase in weld depth, therefore it
3mm arc gap and
can be proposed that the fluid flow appears to be in the
2.7mm/s welding speed
outward direction when Al2O3 flux is added. When Fe2O3
weld without flux at 1.3 7.10 0.183 mixed with TiO2 flux was used, the oxygen content in the
180A current by keeping weld pool increased to a larger extent as Fe2O3 is unstable.
3mm arc gap and This reversed the Marangoni convection very sharply,
3.5mm/s welding speed
leading to even more increase in the weld depth than that
weld with 100% TiO2 3.14 6.16 0.510 when only TiO2 flux was used. It is recommended that
flux at 150A current by combination of fluxes such as mixture of TiO2 and Fe2O3
keeping 3mm arc gap flux should be used to achieve desirable properties of the
and 2.7mm/s welding weld.
speed
REFERENCES
weld with 100% TiO2 2.81 6.83 0.411
flux at 180A current by [1] A. Rodrigues and A. Loureiro: Science and Technology of Welding
keeping 3mm arc gap and Joining, Vol. 10 (2005), pp760.
and 3.5mm/s welding [2] S. M. Gurevich and V. M. Zamkov: Avt. Svarka, 1966, Vol. 12,
speed pp13-16.
[3] W. Lucas and D. Howse, ―Activating Flux – Increasing the
weld with 100% Al2O3 1.32 7.83 0.168 performance and productivity of the TIG and plasma processes‖,
flux at 150A current by Welding and Metal Fabrication, Jan 1996, Vol. 64, pp11-17.
keeping 3mm arc gap [4] P. C. J. Anderson and R. Wiktorowicz, ―Improving productivity with
and 2.7mm/s welding A-TIG welding‖, Welding and Metal Fabrication, March 1996, Vol.
speed. 64, pp108-109.
[5] H. Y. Huang, S. W. Shyu, K. H. Tseng and C. P. Chou, ―Evaluation
weld with 100% Al2O3 1.25 6.18 0.202
of TIG flux welding on the characteristics of stainless steel‖, Science
flux at 180A current by
and Technology of Welding and Joining, March 2005, Vol.10,
keeping 3mm arc gap
pp566-573.
and 3.5mm/s welding
speed. [6] Sindo Kou, Welding Metallurgy, John Wiley and sons, 2nd Edition,
2003.
weld with60% TiO2 + 2.64 6.16 0.428
40% Fe2O3 flux at 150A Acknowledgment
current by keeping 3mm Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science
arc gap and 2.7mm/s
welding speed Department of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
weld with60% TiO2 + 2.92 6.81 0.428 Powai.
40% Fe2O3 flux at 180A
current by keeping 3mm
Mechanical Engineering Department of Pillai’s Institute
arc gap and 3.5mm/s of Information Technology, New Panvel.
welding speed

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