Evaluation of the optimal strength and ductility of a mild steel arc welded plate based on the weld design

ABSTRACT

The design of the weld joint along with the process parameters has been identified as a critical factor in determining the strength and ductility of the weld. Quite often, these parameters are often ignored by manufacturers due to the unavailability of requisite data, thereby leading to welded joints prone to ductile failure. This study reveals the significant effect of the choice of filler metal material and weld design on the optimal strength and ductility of a gas tungsten arc welded joint, taking into consideration the optimal combination of the process parameters. Based on the results of the three different filler metal materials used, ER308 recorded the most outstanding performance thereby making it the choice for the experiment. Further studies to determine the optimal parameters using the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) reveal that both techniques are very suitable techniques for determining the optimal responses for the combined input parameters. However, an optimal combination of the responses shows that the accuracy of the GA outperformed that of RSM.

KEYWORDS:

• Filler metal
• weld design
• yield strength
• optimization
• genetic algorithm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.