Molten pool behavior in the tandem submerged arc welding process

A three-dimensional numerical heat transfer and fluid flow model is developed to examine the temperature profiles, velocity fields, weld pool shape and size in a two-wire tandem submerged arc welding process. The model solves the equations of the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy along with the volume of fluid method. The volume of fluid method is used to track the shape of the free surface. Further, a novel scheme is proposed to handle the arc interaction and its influence on the molten droplet transfer direction. Using the computational fluid dynamics simulations, it is found that the droplet movement and arc forces from the leading electrode heavily affect the molten pool flow patterns and the resultant bead shapes, even though the same heat inputs are applied. The computed weld width and penetration are in fair agreement with the corresponding experimental results.