Characteristics of metal droplet transfer in wire-arc additive manufacturing of aluminum alloy

The wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process applies gas metal arc welding (GMAW) technology. The wire materials of aluminum alloy are melted to form metal droplet by the arc discharge and are accumulated layer-by-layer in this process. The arc voltage and arc acoustic emission (AE) signals we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of advanced manufacturing technology 2018-11, Vol.99 (5-8), p.1521-1530
Main Authors: Liang, Zhu, Jinglong, Li, Yi, Luo, Jingtao, Han, Chengyang, Zhang, Jie, Xu, Dong, Chen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic emission
Additive manufacturing
Aluminum alloys
Aluminum base alloys
CAE) and Design
Computer-Aided Engineering (CAD
Deposition
Droplets
Electric arcs
Electric potential
Engineering
Gas metal arc welding
Industrial and Production Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Media Management
Original Article
Polynomials
Process parameters
Regression analysis
Signal processing
Wire
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Summary:The wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process applies gas metal arc welding (GMAW) technology. The wire materials of aluminum alloy are melted to form metal droplet by the arc discharge and are accumulated layer-by-layer in this process. The arc voltage and arc acoustic emission (AE) signals were detected synchronously in the experiment. According to the signal feature of arc voltage and arc AE, the droplet transfer behaviors in various transfer modes were investigated based on the GMAW-WAAM process. Furthermore, significance of parameters was analyzed and computational models of droplet size and deposition rate were developed to evaluate the quality and efficiency of WAAM. The results showed that the identification of the characteristics of droplet transfer mode can be realized by means of arc signals analysis, which is an alternative method for the analysis of droplet transfer in the GMAW-WAAM process. The interaction of arc voltage and arc current ( U  ×  I ) is the most important factor to influence the droplet transfer, and the cubic polynomial regression equation is a more ideal model to describe the relationship between the frequency of droplet transfer and arc power. The droplet radius decreases exponentially with the increase of frequency of droplet transfer, and the deposition rate increases with the increase of droplet transfer frequency by cubic polynomial rule.
ISSN:0268-3768
1433-3015
DOI:10.1007/s00170-018-2604-7