Tandem gas metal arc welding of thick steel plates: Progress in productivity and properties using advanced process modes

Tandem gas metal arc welding (T-GMAW) utilizes simultaneous deposition from two wires to enhance the productivity for joining thick sections. Current knowledge on the actual energy consumption vis-à-vis filler wire deposition rate in T-GMAW is limited. We present here a detailed investigation on multi-pass single V-groove T-GMAW of a 30 mm thick structural steel plate with real-time monitoring of current, voltage and metal transfer modes for both filler wires. A novel electrical deposition efficiency (EDE) metric is realized using measured current and voltage transients to correlate electrical energy usage with the deposition rate. For a constant wire feed rate, the short-circuiting metal transfer mode resulted in much lesser energy input and 50% higher EDE in comparison to the pulsed mode of metal transfer.