Experimental Investigation of Process Parameters By ANOVA of TIG Welding of 316 Stainless Steel

Tungsten Inert Gas Arc Welding is a commonly used welding technique due to its versatility and ease that can be maintained in almost all type of working conditions. Stainless Steel (SS316) possessing high strength and toughness is usually known to offer major challenges during its welding. In this work, Taguchi’s DOE approach is used to plan and design the experiments to study the effect of welding process parameters on metal deposition rate and hardness of the weld bead. Three input parameters�current, gas flow rate and no. of passes�were selected to ascertain their effect on the metal deposition rate, s/n ratio and hardness. The results show that during the welding of Stainless Steel (SS316) no. of passes is the most significant factor followed by current and gas flow rate, for deposition rate and gas flow rate is significant factor followed by no of passes and current, for hardness as the response. The experimentation has been carried out by using L-9 OA as standardized by Taguchi and the analysis has been accomplished by following standard procedure of data analysis on raw data as well as S/N data. It is revealed that all the three selected parameters�current, no. of passes and gas flow rate�affect both the mean value and variation around the mean value of the selected response i.e. metal deposition rate and hardness of weld bead. The results have further been validated by confirmation experiments.