Experimental Investigation on Autogenous Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) Welding of AISI 1020 Mild Steel

Tungsten Inert Gas welding is also known as Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW), is an advance arc welding process become a popular choice when a high level of weld quality or considerable precision welding is required. However, the major problems of TIG welding process are its slow welding speed and limited to lower thickness material in single pass. In this work, autogenous TIG welding has been performed on 5 mm thick AISI 1020 mild steel plate without using any filler material. Wide range of welding current and scan speed has been tested for obtaining a full penetration welding. Activated flux has also been used to improve the weld depth. After performing welding by maintaining different gap between the plates to be welded, weld bead geometry and tensile strength of the weld has been investigated. It is observed that, by maintaining an appropriate gap full penetration welding of plate is possible which gives strength almost similar to base material