Experimental and simulation of C45 steel bar heat treatment with the GTAW method application

Abstract

The motivation of the paper is an attempt to indicate the relationship between the selected Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) technology and the parameters of the boundary conditions for the simulation of the heat treatment process of elements made of medium-carbon steel. The authors of the paper prepared and described a series of numerical simulations and experimental studies concerning this problem. Simulations often use previously-developed analytical equations to describe the relationships between process parameters. The results obtained for the input data for determining the heat source power (voltage) from the analytical equation and experimental measurements were compared. Several cases of the size of the areas of direct influence of the GTAW arc (various radius of a simulation heat source) were analysed. All computations were performed in the author’s software based on Finite Element Method (FEM) solving the heat transfer equation with the convection term. In this paper, the GTAW heating parameters (boundary condition) for a current intensity equal 30 A were identified. With the assumed arc efficiency coefficient, the arc voltage set on the device and the measured value of the arc current, the optimum radius of the heat source was determined. The identification of parameters was confirmed by the convergence of the results of numerical simulation in three-dimensional space (3D) with the results of the experiment. Unfortunately, the applied methodology did not give good results for current equal to 50A.