Abstract:
Welding has a wide range of applications in industry, thus it's critical to optimize the process
parameters to get better outcomes. However, successful metal welding has posed significant
hurdles in terms of the mechanical properties of the materials to be bonded under a common
welding situation. Most of the researcher’s focused on thick plate metal tungsten inert gas
welding and welding thin sheets is one of today's most difficult engineering tasks. As a result,
a range of issues arise during welding, such as cracking, excessive weld residual strains, stress
corrosion, and so on. This work aims to optimize tungsten inert gas welding input parameters
to improve the tensile strength, bending strength, and hardness of 304 Austenitic stainless
steel sheet metal. Speed control set up has been designed to increase the welding quality. To
determine the effect of process parameters on butt weld joints, the input parameters were
chosen with a range of welding current from 70 to 110 amps, welding speed from 13.9 to 25
cm/min, voltage from 12 to 23 volts, and Argon gas flow rates from 5 to 10 L\min. L9 orthog-onal array design was used to conduct the trials. The Taguchi, Fuzzy Logic, and ANOVA were
utilized to examine the welding qualities of metal joints in order to improve the tungsten inert
gas welding input parameters. A mathematical model was built to compare the outcomes of
the experiment to the fuzzy logic model. Tensile strength, bending strength, and hardness
maximum values were found to be 614.8 MPa, 765.5 MPa, and 94.3 HR, respectively. The best
combination of characteristics was found to be welding current of 110 Amp, welding sped of
13.86 cm/min, voltage 17.5 V and Gas flow rate 7.5 l/min. The results obtained shows that the
Gas flow rate was the greatest influence on response, followed by welding current. Finally
conformation tests results were conducted within the 95 % confidence interval.
Keywords: Tungsten inert gas welding, stainless steel, process parameters, Taguchi, Fuzzy
Logic, mechanical properties