Experimental Investigations on Electron Beam Welding of Austenetic/Ferritic Stainless Steel for Space Applications

Abstract Electron Beam Welding is one of the widely used processes in industries for joining dissimilar materials. The primary advantage of Electron Beam Welding is its high depth to width ratio which results in a very strong weld. The quality of weld depends upon the parameters, viz. Accelerating voltage, beam current, welding speed, focus current, vacuum level, etc. The primary objective of the study is to optimize the parameters so as to obtain the best quality of the weld for a chosen product. The experiments were designed based on Taguchi methods to minimize the number of iterations. Specimens were welded with different combinations of the parameters based on Taguchi's L9 Orthogonal Array and they were characterized using optical microscope. Based on the values of the depth of penetration the optimum parameters are reported. Multiple regression analysis and results of ANOVA depict that the beam current have maximum influence in determining the depth of penetratio