Impact of driving forces on molten pool in gas metal arc welding

A numerical scrutiny was performed to analyze the effect of driving forces on molten pool in gas metal arc welding. In addition to the basic governing equations required for a general heat and mass transfer analysis by computational fluid dynamics, a volume-of-fluid equation for free surface tracking and additional conservation equations for calculating the distribution of alloy elements were used. Driving forces—buoyancy, drag force, arc pressure, electromagnetic force, Marangoni pressure, and droplet impingement—and the arc heat source were mathematically modeled and applied to the simulation. In order to examine the effect of driving forces, a two-dimensional axisymmetric simulation was performed, and the effect of each driving force was analyzed using the velocity components. In the radial velocity component, the effect of droplet impingement and the Marangoni force was large, and in the vertical velocity component, the droplet impingement effect was dominant. A three-dimensional simulation was also performed considering all the driving forces together, and the result was verified by comparison with experimental results. Relatively high alloying element contents were found at the bottom of the fusion zone, which was due to the droplet impingement generating a high vertical velocity.