Open AccessCurrent trends in welding flux development
Author(s) -
Ademola David Adeyeye
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
nigerian journal of technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2467-8821
pISSN - 0331-8443
DOI - 10.4314/njt.v40i2.9
Subject(s) - welding , flux (metallurgy) , submerged arc welding , quality (philosophy) , software deployment , current (fluid) , arc welding , mechanical engineering , materials science , metallurgy , engineering , electrical engineering , philosophy , software engineering , epistemology
Welding flux makes significant contribution to weld-metal quality, productivity of welding process and rapid deployment of new materials. Deployment of new materials has been hampered because of lengthy trial-and-test experiments and paucity of methodology for modelling and optimisation in the traditional welding flux development. This paper discussed the contributions made to mitigate the drawbacks of traditional welding flux development in areas of experimentations, prediction modelling and optimisation. Limitations of current efforts were identified and suggested for future research, namely (i) current response models are limited to well-behaved flux systems and do not account for edge and additive effects of flux ingredients (ii) non-incorporation of stakeholder’s preferences concerning the relative importance of quality attributes (iii) lack of prediction and optimisation tools for determining optimal coating factor and flux heights for Shielded Metal Arc Welding and Submerge Arc Welding respectively and (iv) non-continuous response functions and concave regions of the trade-off surface are not considered.