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Development of Micro-plasma Arc Welding System for Different Thickness Dissimilar Austenitic Stainless Steels

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Abstract

With the miniaturization of the components, micro-fabrication has gained significant attention for the application in micro-devices. The current work aims to weld dissimilar austenitic stainless steels with different thickness (average ~ 700 µm) by downscaling the traditional arc-based joining process. Micro-plasma arc welding (µ-PAW) with less than 15 A current is used to fabricate the weld joints at different heat input, which can be reviewed as a substitute for laser and electron beam welding process in terms of cost-effectiveness. The welding fixture employed to hold the small workpiece contributes significantly to achieve the complete establishment of the µ-PAW process. A low amount of heat input leads to reduced dendritic and secondary dendritic arm spacing, which increases the joint efficiency up to ~ 115%. A high value of heat input changes the mode of failure from ductile to mixed mode due to micro/macro-voids’ existence, decreases the corrosion resistance due to chromium depletion from 25 to 17 wt.%, and increases the number and size of the pores. A finite element-based computational model is also employed to presume the geometrical dimensions of the weld joint that agree well with the experimentally determined values with a maximum error of 9%.

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Acknowledgements

The present investigation is a result of research carried out at IIT Guwahati, India. The authors gratefully acknowledge the experimental facility provided by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Central Workshop, and Central Instruments Facility (CIF) of IIT Guwahati. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the experimental facility provided by Central Research Facility (CRF) of VSSUT, Burla, Odisha, India for the use of scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Central Research Facility (CRF) of IIT Kharagpur, India, for the use of X-ray computed tomography (XCT).

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, 781039, Assam, India

    Swagat Dwibedi & Swarup Bag

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Dwibedi, S., Bag, S. Development of Micro-plasma Arc Welding System for Different Thickness Dissimilar Austenitic Stainless Steels. J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. C 102, 657–671 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40032-021-00696-6

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