Sustainability assessment of tungsten inert gas welding process using grey relational analysis

• Main Authors: Bewoor, A. K., Patil, Nitin, Kaliappan, S., Patil, Pravin P., Raju, Raja, Ramanathan, P., Kulkarni, V. A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Content analysis; Economic analysis; Gas flow; Gas tungsten arc welding; Gas welding; Grooves; Inert gas welding; Life cycle analysis; Life cycle assessment; Process parameters; Rare gases; Sustainability; Taguchi methods
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0163918

Tungsten Inert Gas Welding (TIG) process is one of the most commonly employed material joining processes utilized in the various industrial sectors such as marine, ship-building, automotive, aerospace, construction and petrochemicals etc. The increasing pressure on manufacturing sector wants the welding process to be more productive and sustainable in nature. To enhance the performance, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis of TIG welding process is done to measure its impact on the environment and scope to characterize the sustainability for the TIG process have been studied. The existing research models used higher range of process parameters with giving less importance to the Weld Bead Geometry. This experiment based investigation considers a lower range of control parameters viz. current, gas flow rate and the dimensional parameters such as groove angle, depth of groove and root gap. The experiments are designed using the Taguchi Method with further sustainability assessment using Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) considering economic and environmental aspects. Finally, the study concluded recommendations towards achieving an economical and sustainable TIG welding process.