Effects of Filler Wire Intervention on Gas Tungsten Arc: Part I - Mechanism

For gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), the effects of filler wire on the GTA are worth being clarified, which will help deepen the understanding of arc characteristics and in-spire new ideas for the real-time monitoring of weld quality. To this end, this work proposed a novel sensing method of detecting probe voltages (i.e., the voltage signals between a filler wire and tungsten electrode/workpiece). Based on this method, in this first part of the work, a tungsten probe was used to replace the filler wire and to interact with the arc in the specific experiments to elucidate the static and dynamic interaction mechanisms between the GTA and filler wire. The results showed that the filler wire intervention deflects the arc to various degrees and will change the volt-age signals. As a metal conductor, the filler wire will in-crease the arc voltage by increasing the average electric field strength. However, its effects on the different areas of the arc are not always consistent, which makes the change trend of the probe voltages not always the same. Moreover, due to thermal inertia, the probe voltage does not strictly change synchronously with the arc voltage under the dynamic disturbance. This work lays a theoretical foundation for monitoring the stability of the GTAW process.