International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 1ŗ, ˜ŸŽ–ber-2013 25

ISSN 2229-5518

PARAMETRIC OPTIMIZATION OF TIG

WELDING PARAMETERS USING TAGUCHI
METHOD FOR DISSIMILAR JOINT
(Low carbon steel with AA1050)
J.Pasupathy, V.Ravisankar

Abstract— Tungsten Inert Gas welding (TIG) process is an important component in many industrial operations. The TIG welding
parameters are the most important factors affecting the quality, productivity and cost of welding. This paper presents the influence of welding
parameters like welding current, welding speed on strength of low carbon steel on AA1050 material during welding. A plan of experiments based
on Taguchi technique has been used to acquire the data. An Orthogonal array, signal to noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are
employed to investigate the welding characteristics of dissimilar joint and optimize the welding parameters. Finally the conformations tests have
been carried out to compare the predicted values with the experimental values to confirm its effectiveness in the analysis of strength.
Index Terms— TIG welding, optimization, orthogonal array, S/N ratio

——————————  ——————————

1 INTRODUCTION

T UNGSTEN Inert Gas welding is one of the most widely [31] designed the DOE using Taguchi approach can significant-

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used processes in industry. The input parameters play a ly reduce time required for experimental investigations
very significant role in determining the quality of a welded [29,37,39]. In this investigation, Taguchi's orthogonal arrays
joint. In fact, weld geometry directly affects the complexity of were used to conduct the experiments to find the contributions
weld schedules and thereby the construction and manufactur- of each factor and to optimize the parameter settings.
ing costs of steel structures and mechanical devices. Therefore,
these parameters affecting the arc and welding should be esti-
mated and their changing conditions during process must be
2 TAGUCHI’S DESIGN METHOD
known before in order to obtain optimum results; in fact a per- Taguchi Technique is applied to plan the experiments. The
fect arc can be achieved when all the parameters are in confor- Taguchi method has become a powerful tool for improving
mity. These are combined in two groups as first order adjusta- productivity during research and development, so that high
ble and second order adjustable parameters defined before quality products can be produced quickly and at low cost. Dr.
welding process. Former are welding current, welding speed Taguchi of Nippon Telephones and Telegraph Company, Ja-
and distance between the electrode and workpiece. These pa- pan has developed a method based on "ORTHOGONAL AR-
rameters will affect the weld characteristics to a great extent. RAY" experiments which gives much reduced "variance" for
Because these factors can be varied over a large range, they are the experiment with "optimum settings" of control parameters.
considered the primary adjustments in any welding operation. Thus the combination of Design of Experiments with optimi-
Their values should be recorded for every different type of weld zation of control parameters to obtain best results is achieved
to permit reproducibility. Ugur Esme [45] an investigation of in the Taguchi Method. "Orthogonal Arrays" (OA) provide a
the effect and optimization of welding parameters on the tensile set of well balanced (minimum) experiments and Dr. Tagu-
shear strength in the resistance spot welding (RSW) process- chi's Signal-to-Noise ratios (S/N), which are log functions of
conducted experimental studies under varying electrode forces, desired output, serve as objective functions for optimization,
welding currents, electrode diameters, and welding times. K. help in data analysis and prediction of optimum results.
Kishore, P. V. Gopal Krishna, K. Veladri and Syed Qasim Ali Signal-to-Noise Ratio
[17] worked on welding of materials like steel and is still critical There are 3 Signal-to-Noise ratios of common interest for op-
and ongoing. Sourav Datta, Ajay Biswas, Gautam Majumdar timization
[39] worked on Sensitivity Analysis. It has been carried out to (i) Smaller-The-Better:
check the case sensitiveness of relation importance of different n = -10 Log10 [mean of sum of squares of
bead geometry parameters imposing predominant effect on the measured data]
optimal parametric combination. P K Palani, Dr N Murugan, (ii) Larger-The-Better:
n = -10 Log10 [mean of sum squares of reci-
 J.Pasupathy, Research Scholar, Department of Manufacturing Engineer- procal of measured data]
ing, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram, Tamilna-
du, India. PH- +91 9791564551E-mail: [email protected] (iii) Nominal-The-Best:
 V.Ravisankar, Professor, Department of Manufacturing Engineering, n = 10 Log10 square of mean
Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram, Tamilnadu, variance
India, PH-+91 9965538727. E-mail:[email protected]

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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 4, Issue ŗŗǰȱ˜ŸŽ–‹Ž›ȬŘŖŗřȱ
ISSN 2229-5518

2.1 WORK M ATERIAL: quality characteristic for strength must be taken. The M.S.D. for
1mm thick Low carbon steel and 2mm thick AA1050 alu- higher-the –better quality characteristic can be expressed as,
minium alloy were used. The dimensions of the work piece, M.S.D = ∑ 1/Pi2
length 300 mm, width 150mm. For selection of workpiece, refer- Where, Pi is the value of penetration.
ence of the procedure handbook of Arc Welding & Welding
Process Technology by P. T. Houldcroft is referred. This expe-
riment, TIG welding is done using Lincoln machine, Polarity:
Direct Current Electrode Negative [DCEN], Welding current,
welding speed and distance of electrode from workpiece are
130, 135, 140Amps, 3.2, 3.5, 3.8mm/sec and 2.3, 2.4, 2.5mm re-
spectively, Voltage 16V, Frequency 60Hz, The arc distance, elec-
trode type, electrode size and electrode tip angle were 2.4mm,
EWTh-2, 3mm in diameter and Vertical respectively. Pure argon
gas with 20L/min was used for preventing oxidation of molten
steel.

2.2 L9 LEVEL TAGUCHI ORTHOGONAL ARRAY Regardless of the category of the quality characteristic, a
greater S/N ratio corresponds to better quality characteristics.
Taguchi‘s orthogonal design uses a special set of prede-

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Therefore, the optimal level of the process parameters is the
fined arrays called orthogonal arrays (OAs) to design the plan
level with the greatest S/N ratio. The S/N response table for
of experiment. These standard arrays stipulate the way of full
strength is shown in Table No.4 as below
information of all the factors that affects the process perfor-
mance (process responses). The corresponding OA is selected
from the set of predefined OAs according to the number of fac-
tors and their levels that will be used in the experiment. Below
Table No.2 shows L9 Orthogonal array from Table1.

4. ANOVA (ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE)

The purpose of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is to
investigate which design parameters significantly affect the
quality characteristic. This is accomplished by separating the
total variability of the S/N ratios, which is measured by the
sum of the squared deviations from the total mean S/N ratio,
into contributions by each of the design parameters and the
error. First, the total sum of squared deviations SST from the
total mean S/N ratio nm can be calculated as,
SST = ∑(ni - nm)2
The result of ANOVA is shown in

3. ANALYSIS OF S/N RATIO

In the Taguchi Method the term ‗signal‘ represents the de-
sirable value (Mean) for the output characteristic and the term
‗noise‘ represents the undesirable value (Standard Deviation)
for the output characteristic. Therefore, the S/N ratio to the
mean to the S. D. S/N ratio used to measure the quality charac-
teristic deviating from the desired value. In S/N ratio, S is de-
fined as
S= -10 log (M.S.D.) 5. CONFORMATION TEST
where, M.S.D. is the Mean Square Deviation for the output Once the optimal level of design parameters has been se-
characteristic. lected, the final step is to predict and verify the improvement of
To obtain optimal welding performance, higher-the better the quality characteristic using the optimal level of design pa-
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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 4, Issue ŗŗǰȱ˜ŸŽ–‹Ž›ȬŘŖŗřȱ
ISSN 2229-5518

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