art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The high strength aluminium alloy 7A52 thick plate is commonly welded by double-V butt welding. The
Received 3 March 2016 general one sided arc welding requires indispensable root cleaning before the rear side root weld, which
Received in revised form consumes excessive time and cost. Thus the robotic welding is always difcult to be carried on. In this
3 July 2016
paper, a novel robotic double-sided coaxial GTAW process has been applied to the welding of Al7A52. The
Accepted 4 July 2016
Available online 7 July 2016
microstructure and mechanical properties of the thick weld joints both welded by robotic self-uxing
double sided coaxial GTAW (RSF-DSC-GTAW) and robotic wire-feed double sided coaxial GTAW (RWF-
Keywords: DSC-GTAW) has been investigated. It was found that the microstructures of weld zones of both processes
Double sided gas tungsten arc welding typically consist of (Al) and (MgZn2) phases. Moreover, the weld zone of the RWF-DSC-GTAW joint
Aluminium alloy 7A52
exhibits Interval layers distribution because of the less proportion of phase. The average micro hard-
Microstructure
ness in the weld zone of RSF-DSC-GTAW joints and RWF-DSC-GTAW joints are 91.9 HV and 80.1 HV,
Mechanical properties
respectively. With a better elongation property, the average ultimate tensile strength of RSF-DSC-GTAW
joint is 344 Mpa. While it is 244 Mpa for the RWF-DSC-GTAW joint. It is considered that the mechanical
properties of the RSF-DSC-GTAW joint are more superior to the RWF-DS-GTAW joint.
& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction quality and efciency for high strength aluminium alloys welding
[411]. Both LBW and FSB show lower distortion and higher ef-
Possessing good combination of strength and toughness, alu- ciency than arc welding process. However, the excessive expensive
minium alloy 7A52 (Al7A52) is commonly strengthened by heat equipment cost, limited welding positions and sensitive gaps im-
treatment and natural aging [1]. The alloy has been widely used pede the large-scale industrial application of these two processes.
for the fabrication of airframe structure, armoured vehicles, rail- Moreover, the thickness of butt welded aluminium alloys plate by
way transport systems, high speed ship, and cryogenic pressure these processes is commonly less than 12 mm. Recently years
vessels [2]. The one sided arc welding with multi-pass welding several Aluminium alloy thick plates welding with FSB has been
process is commonly employed for Double-V groove butt welding reported [1214]. Due to Uninform thermal-mechanical actions for
of high strength aluminium alloy thick plate. To reduce porosity thick plates, it seems difcult to achieve good weld with FSB
and defects in root weld, gouging from underside of the rear weld process. More butt joints of high strength aluminium alloy thick
is necessary. Furthermore, gouging large groove angel above 70 is plate have to be completed by multi-layers multi-pass arc welding
also essential. Thus more materials have to be removed from un- process. Therefore, productivity improvement and higher quality
are both essential for this process.
derside of root weld for high strength aluminium [3]. Even pre-
Double-sided arc welding (DSAW) process is a relative new
heating for the rear root weld is recommended too. These ex-
compound arc welding process that is developed in recent years
cessive procedures consume redundancy time and materials.
[15]. Compared with the traditional one sided arc welding, it has
Therefore, robotic welding is always difcult to be implemented. If
more potential advantages, such as deeper penetration, less weld
these excessive procedures could be eliminated and automatic
defects and improved productivity [16,17]. The butt joint of high
robotic welding could be executed, cost reduction and productivity
strength aluminium alloy plate is symmetrically being heated in
improvement will be quite signicant.
the same weld pool by dual opposing arc. Because the welded
Recent studies suggest that laser beam welding (LBW) and
areas of both sides are shielded by inert gas, the possibility of
friction stir welding (FSB) are welding processes with higher porosity and the regular welded distortion are signicantly re-
duced. In addition, this DSAW process has more effective heating
n
Corresponding author. effect, which improves the weld penetration.
E-mail address: fyh@njust.edu.cn (Y. Feng). Previous researches have more concentrated on butt weld of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2016.07.011
0921-5093/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y. Feng et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 673 (2016) 815 9
thin sheet (less than 12 mm) carbon steel, stainless steel and same direction at a constant speed. The high quality modern in-
aluminium alloy with DSAW process [18,19]. Few published papers dustrial robots offer sufcient accuracy, assuring opposite coaxial
have mentioned about thick high strength steel welding with this position of the two GTA arcs. Furthermore, the synergy control box
process. It has never been applied to butt welding of thick high has been designed to consort two sets of robotic GTAW system.
strength aluminium alloy plates. The combination of robot auto- The two arcs can switched on and off at the same time. In order to
matic welding [20] with double-sided coaxial GTAW will further ensure as stable process as possible two GTA torches were
promote thick plates welding efciency. These thin sheets can throughout in coaxial position robotic in double-sided coaxial
obtain a full penetration weld with single pass welding process. GTAW process. The experiment setup was shown in Fig. 3. The
However, for those thick sheets (above 12 mm) a full penetration main welding conditions and process parameters are presented in
weld is impossible to complete with this process. Multi-pass Table 3.
multi-layer welding on each side of thick plate is still best choice
for it. Its indispensable root cleaning before the rear side root weld 2.3. Testing conditions
makes automatic robotic welding is difcult to be implemented.
Therefore, an attempt has been made to apply the novel robotic After RSF-DSC-GTAW and RWF-DSC-GTAW, these joints were
double-sided coaxial GTAW arc welding process to weld 20 mm mounted, polished and etched in chemical reagent (14% hydro-
high strength aluminium alloy plates without preheating treat- uoric acid) for 15 s to display macro and microstructural features
ment and gouging for rear weld. moreover, a comparison research in the transverse direction. An optical microscope (MR5000, Chi-
on the microstructure and mechanical properties of root weld na) was used for observing macro and microstructural features in
with robotic self-uxing double sided coaxial GTAW (RSF-DSC- the joint's different zones. The micro hardness from the base metal
GTAW) process and robotic wire-feed double sided coaxial GTAW to the weld centre of these joints were measured by using a micro
(RWF-DSC-GTAW) process has been further investigated too. hardness tester (Shimadzu DUH-201, Japan) with a load of 0.1 kg
for 10 s dwell time. An electro-mechanically controlled Universal
Testing Machine (CCS-44100) was used for measuring the ultimate
tensile strength and elongation of the specimens at room tem-
2. Experimental method
perature. Observation of the fracture surfaces of the tensile tested
specimens were performed by a Field Emission Scanning Electron
2.1. Materials
(FE-SEM) (FEI-Quanta 250).
Table 1
Chemical composition (wt%) of Al7A52 and ER5356 ller wire.
Element Zn Mg Mn Cr Ti Zr Cu Fe Si Al
Al7A52 4.04.8 2.02.8 0.20.5 0.150.25 0.050.18 0.050.15 0.050.20 0.3 0.25 Bal.
ER5356 0.10 4.55.5 0.050.2 0.050.20 0.060.20 / 0.1 0.4 0.25 Bal.
Table 2
Mechanical properties of un-welded base
metal.
3.2. Microstructure
Table 3 zones. The results are presented Fig. 6. Mg element of A5356 wire
Welding conditions and process parameters. increased the amount of Mg in the weld zone of the RWF-DSC-
GTAW joint (Fig. 6b). On the contrast, that of the RSF-DSC-GTAW
Process RSF-DSC-GTAW RWF-DSC-GTAW
joint is decreased because of magnesium evaporation during arc
Tungsten electrode diameter (mm) 5.0 5.0 burning. Also the sum amount of Mg and Zn in the RWF-DSC-
Type of tungsten electrode W-Ce W-Ce GTAW joint is higher than 7%. It can be concluded that the second
Shielding gas Pure Argon Pure argon (99.99%) phase in both welds is MgZn2 from the element proportion of Mg
(99.99%)
Fill wire diameter (mm) 1.6
and Zn in Fig. 7. WZ of the RSF-DSC-GTAW joint has relatively less
Average welding current (A) 280 280 proportion of MgZn2 (Fig. 7a) than that of the RWF-DSC-GTAW
Arc voltage (V) 12.613.4 12.713.3 joint. As shown in Fig. 6, the total amount of Mg and Zn in the
Welding speed (cm/min) 20 15 weld centre is less than 7% (Fig. 6a). There is relatively less pro-
Gas ow rate (L/min) 18.0 18.0
portion of MgZn2 (Fig. 7a). The results of XRD analysis in weld
Wire feed rate (m/min) 1.5
Distance from electrode to base 12.0 12.0 zone for the RWF-DSC-GTAW joint are presented in Fig. 8. It il-
metal (mm) lustrates that the weld zone primarily consisted of Al and the
strengthening phase MgZn2.
(a) (b)
White region lack region
Pores
Fig. 4. Weld cross-section at different welding process, (a) RSF-DSC-GTAW, (b) RWF-DSC-GTAW.
12 Y. Feng et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 673 (2016) 815
BM HAZ FZ WM
WM FZ HAZ BM
Fig. 5. Microstructure of RSF-DSC-GTAW and RWF-DSC-GTAW, (a) base metal, (b) RWF-DSC-GTAW joint, (c) RSF-DSC-GTAW joint, (d) white banded region (RWF-DSC-
GTAW), (e) black banded region (RWF-DSC-GTAW, (f) RSF-DSC-GTAW weld region. For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to
the web version of this article.
Fig. 6. Micro zone scanning results in the weld centre region, (a) RSF-DSC-GTAW, (b) RWF-DSC-GTAW.
HAZ. The lower hardness in the WZ and HAZ of the RWF-DSC- Figs. 11 and 12. It is found that the average ultimate tensile
GTAW joint is mainly due to the different composition of the strength of RSF-DSC-GTAW and RWF-DSC-GTAW is 344 MPa and
ER5356 ller metal and Al7A52 parent material. On the other 244 MPa respectively, which are 71.7% and 44.7% of the base metal.
hand, the micro hardness distribution in the RWF-DSC-GTAW joint The average elongation of RSF-DSC-GTAW and RWF-DSC-GTAW is
uctuates more obviously than in the RSF-DSC-GTAW joint. The 6.3% and 1.3% respectively, which are 77.77% and 16.04% of the
reason for this is that the strengthening phase MgZn2 distributes base metal. For RSF-DSC-GTAW the fracture location is in the HAZ
inhomogeneously in WZ of the RWF-DSC-GTAW. and the angle between the fracture plane and the tensile axial
direction is 45. Distinct from the base metal and RSF-DSC-GTAW,
3.5. Tensile properties the fracture position of the RWF-DSC-GTAW joint locates in the
WZ. The angel between its fracture plane and tensile axial direc-
As presented in Fig. 10, three tensile specimens were tested for tion is 90, which indicates a typical brittle fracture property ex-
each of the Base metal, RSF-DSC-GTAW joint and RWF-DSC-GTAW isted because of the unconspicuous plastic deformation. All the
joint. The ultimate tensile strength and elongation are shown in results indicate that the ultimate tensile strength and the
Y. Feng et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 673 (2016) 815 13
Fig. 7. SEM microstructure of the MgZn2 strengthening phase in (a) RSF-DSC-GTAW, (b) RWF-DSC-GTAW.
Fig. 10. Tensile specimens of base material, RSF-DSC-GTAW joint and RWF-DSC-
GTAW joint.
Fig. 11. The Ultimate tensile strength and elongation of RSF-DSC-GTAW joint.
Fig. 9. Micro-hardness distribution in the welded joint of (a) RSF-DSC-GTAW,
(b) RWF-DSC-GTAW.
14 Y. Feng et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 673 (2016) 815
4. Conclusions
Dimples
Fig. 13. The fracture microscopic morphology observation of base material, self-uxing joint and wire-feed joint, (a) base metal, (b) RSF-DSC-GTAW, (c) RWF-DSC-GTAW.
Y. Feng et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 673 (2016) 815 15