High-Speed Welding of Stainless Steel with Additional Compensatory Gas Jet Blow Molten Pool

To avoid humping bead defects in high-speed welding, this paper proposes the method of an additional and compensatory gas jet blow molten pool. A pulsed metal inert gas high-speed welding test platform was constructed for compensatory gas jet blow molten pool. A total of 304 stainless steel sheets were used as the welding workpieces under equal heat inputs. Two high-speed butt welding processes were conducted and compared, in which the workpieces were welded with and without compensatory gas jets at 154 cm/min and 167 cm/min, respectively. After high-speed welding with compensatory gas jet blow, the weld appearance was straight, uniform, and high-quality, with no humping bead or undercut defects. The macroscopic morphologies and microstructures of cross-sections of the weld at the toe, near the surface, the middle, and the bottom portion all showed the stirring effect of the gas jet on the molten pool and improved grain refinement degrees. Hardness was enhanced in the weld center and the heat-affected zone. At welding speeds of 154 cm/min and 167 cm/min, the fracture load capacities of the welds were increased by 24.9 and 10.4%, respectively.