Simulation of heat transfer in gas tungsten arc welding of stainless steel type 304

In this paper, the distribution of temperature and thermal cycle in gas tungsten arc welding of stainless steel 304 is studied. The welding operation was performed under different heat inputs of 540 and 782 kJ/mm on the plates with 2 mm thickness. The Abaqus software was employed for simulation. The volumetric heat distribution, according to the double ellipsoidal (Goldak) model, was considered as the heat source of the welding and DFLUX subroutine was coded by FORTRAN. The simulation results were compared with the Rosenthal and Adams models and experimental results. The simulation results with both heat inputs are well compatible with the cross section dimensions of the welds, while the Rosenthal model predicts a smaller welds’ pool size. The temperature-time curves obtained from the simulation and Rosenthal model have considerable differences but their predicted cooling time and rate in the temperature range of 800 to 500 °c, especially in heat input of 782 kJ/mm, are close to each other (the difference is less than 7.2%). The results also showed that the maximum temperature of the regions farther from the fusion boundary in Adams model is predicted higher than that of simulation and Rosenthal model, while the results of simulation and Rosenthal model are closer to each other.