Cooling rate in 800 to 500uC range from dimensional analysis

A. Arora*1, G. G. Roy2 and T. DebRoy1

Structure and properties of steel welds are affected by their cooling rates in the 800 to 500uC range. The available cooling rate correlations are based mostly on heat conduction equation that ignores convective heat transfer and are inaccurate or empirical in nature and valid only for a limited range of welding conditions. Numerical heat and fluid flow models can accurately calculate cooling rates, but they are not widely available. In the present paper, the authors propose and test a generalised correlation for cooling rate developed through dimensional analysis, valid for a wide range of welding processes, operating parameters and material properties.
Keywords: Cooling rate, Dimensionless correlation, Arc welding, Laser welding, Steels

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Introduction
The properties of steel welds13 are affected by their cooling rates in the 800 to 500uC range where the phase transformations important for the evolution of nal weld microstructure occur.4 The cooling rates of welded samples are often calculated using analytical solutions of heat conduction equations,5 because they are widely available and easy to use. For three-dimensional heat ow, the cooling rate R is commonly obtained from the heat conduction equation as follows5 R~ 2pkT{Ti 2 Qg (1)

where k is the thermal conductivity of the weld material, T is the temperature at which the cooling rate is calculated, Ti is the interpass temperature, Q is the heat input per unit length of weld deposit and g is the arc efciency. However, Svensson et al.4 have observed that such calculations based on heat conduction model are inadequate in representing experimental cooling curves for a wide range of welding conditions. It is also worth noting that other heat ow models such as that of Rosenthal6 have also been found inappropriate for application to the fusion zone.4 Calculations that ignore convective heat transfer within the weld pool overestimate the spatial variation of temperature because they do not consider the mixing of relatively hot and cold liquid metal. As a result, these calculations also overestimate the cooling rate, which is the product of the spatial gradient of temperature and the solidication velocity. It will be shown subsequently in

this paper that the errors resulting from the use of heat conduction models can be unacceptably high because convection is often the dominant mechanism of heat transfer within the weld pool. The signicant discrepancies between the cooling rates computed from the correlation based on heat conduction model5 and the experimentally measured cooling rate values available in reference 4 are shown in Fig. 1. The cooling rates from the heat conduction equation required values of both thermal conductivity and arc efciency. The values of arc efciency were taken from the values provided in Svensson et al.4 However, Ref. 4 did not include any value of thermal conductivity. In the calculations with heat conduction equation the authors used a value of 27 W m21 K21 for simplicity. It should be noted that the uncertainty in the thermal conductivity values is insignificant when compared with the errors in the computed values of the cooling rates in Fig. 1. In fact, thermal conductivity value used is near the lower end of the temperature dependent thermal conductivity of steels. A higher value of thermal conductivity would result in even higher discrepancy between the experimentally measured cooling rate4 and the values computed5 from the heat conduction equation. It can be observed that heat conduction model5 overestimates the experimental cooling rate4 by a factor of 25 in many cases. Because of the difculties in obtaining reliable cooling rates from heat conduction models, Svensson et al.4 suggested the following form of empirical correlations for computing cooling rate R R~ C1 DT C2 Qg (2)

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA 2 Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India *Corresponding author: email amitarora@psu.edu

where DT is the temperature difference, and C1 and C2 are the empirical constants whose values vary depending on the welding processes and parameters. They proposed 27 sets of values for C1 and C2 for various welding conditions. Each set of values of C1 and C2 is valid for a specic set of welding conditions considered in their

2010 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining

Published by Maney on behalf of the Institute Received 30 April 2010; accepted 8 June 2010 DOI 10.1179/136217110X12720264008394

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Here the authors propose and test a non-dimensional correlation of cooling rate. The proposed correlation considers convective heat transfer in the weld pool indirectly by considering the aspect ratio of the weld pool as an independent variable. It is shown that the proposed correlation can overcome the overestimations of cooling rates by the heat conduction equations. Furthermore, the proposed correlation is shown to be fairly accurate for a wide range of cooling rates resulting from various welding processes, welding variables and workpiece material properties.

Dimensional analysis
Buckingham-p theorem was used to determine the appropriate dimensionless numbers that affect the cooling rate. This theorem states that an equation with n number of variables each expressed by k fundamental units, such as mass M, length L, time T and temperature h can also be expressed by n2k dimensionless numbers.14 In this study, the following eight variables that affect the cooling rate are dened with symbols and dimensions in terms of fundamental units within parenthesis. These are density of the material r (ML23), thermal conductivity of the solid k (MLT23h21), specic heat of solid CP (L2T22h21), temperature at which cooling rate is calculated minus the preheat temperature T2T0 (h) and absorbed heat input per unit length q5gQ (MLT22). The other variables are depth D (L), width W (L) of the weld pool and the cooling rate R (hT21). Considering four fundamental units M, T, L and h, the authors can derive the four dimensionless numbers, as dened below p1 ~ p2 ~ W D k
: 1: rWCP 5 T{To 0 5

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1 Comparison of average experimental cooling rates4 in temperature range of 800500uC with estimated cooling rates using heat conduction model correlation5

empirical correlations, and cannot be used for welding conditions other than the ones used to derive these correlations. Furthermore, the 27 correlations covered cooling rates only up to 48 K s21. In other words, equation (2) is not applicable to many of the high energy density processes that use a high welding speed and involve a high cooling rate. The values of Peclet number for heat transfer within the liquid pool, which represents the ratio of heat transfer by convection to conduction, have been found to be much greater than one in all welding processes, especially for low thermal conductivity materials such as steels.712 Although several numerical models of convective heat transfer and uid ow have been reported in the literature that can accurately calculate cooling rates, these models are complex and not always widely available. Therefore, there is a need for a generalised correlation that can calculate reliable cooling rates for a wide range of welding processes, workpiece materials and welding parameters. The nature of the uid ow and the resulting convective heat transfer affects the temperature proles in the weld pool and its geometry. The weld geometry can be characterised by its aspect ratio which is the ratio of the width to depth of the weld pool. The aspect ratio affects the cooling rates for various welding processes. The aspect ratio depends on the type of material, the nature of the heat sources for various welding processes, the power density of the heat source and the nature and amount of the surface active elements. The presence of a surface active element in steel reverses the uid motion within the weld pool and makes it narrow and deep, with a low aspect ratio. In many cases, a high energy density welding process such as a keyhole mode laser or electron beam welding process produces a deep and narrow weld pool. A weld pool with low aspect ratio tends to dissipate heat primarily in the width and length directions. These directions are often larger than the thickness of the workpiece, and a low aspect ratio may result in a low cooling rate for a given welding speed. On the contrary, a small hemispherical pool may dissipate heat in all three dimensions yielding a high cooling rate.13

(3)

(4)

p3 ~

q W 2 rCP T{To RW
0 CP 5 T{To 1 5 : :

(5)

p4 ~

(6)

Two meaningful dimensionless numbers p1 and p2 can be derived from these four dimensionless numbers, where p1 ~W =D, which isi the aspect ratio of the pool, h and p2 ~Rq= kT{To 2 . Combining the relevant dimensionless numbers, namely, p1 ,p2 , the authors get an expression of reference cooling rate at any temperature T as follows   kT{To 2 W (7) Rref ~ D q Average time for cooling from T1 to T2 may be calculated by integrating equation (7) with respect to time and may be expressed as follows DtT1 =T2 ~ 21=T2 {To {1=T1 {To k=qW =D (8)

The average cooling rate between T1 to T2 may be expressed as

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Cooling rate in 800 to 500uC range from dimensional analysis

 Raverage ~a

  b kT1 {T2 W (9) 2q1=T2 {T0 {1=T1 {T0 D

The empirical constants a and b are introduced for tting equation (9) with the experimental data.

Results and discussion

The values of the constants a and b were determined by plotting the experimental average cooling rate4,1524 between 800 and 500uC (R8/5) against the expression in the parenthesis on right hand side in equation (9). The

data used for the calculation are provided in Table 1. It is assumed that the cooling rates in the fusion zone do not vary spatially. This means that cooling rate at one location in the weld pool can be assumed to be same as that at a location away in the same weld pool. A power law t, represented by the solid line in Fig. 2, yielded a514?491 and b50?477. The nal expression for the average cooling rate R8/5 is as follows    0:477  300 k W R8=5~ :491 14 (10) 2q1=1073{T0 {1=773{ D T where T0 is the preheat temperature in Kelvin.

Table 1 Data used for calculation of cooling rate for experimental cases considered No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Heat input per unit length q, J m21 2?796106 2?796106 2?796106 2?776106 1?746106 1?756106 1?756106 8?516105 9?306105 2?526106 3?946106 3?156106 2?406106 4?646105 1?446106 2?256106 3?736106 3?516106 3?076106 2?136106 2?006106 1?756106 1?616106 1?516106 1?326106 1?306106 1?226106 1?066106 2?896106 6?986105 3?786105 6?686105 1?316106 1?686106 7?046105 1?356106 1?556106 1?666106 1?806106 1?926106 2?056106 2?176106 2?306106 1?556106 1?666106 1?806106 1?926106 2?056106 2?756104 3?676104 4?596104 5?526104 6?446104 7?366104 8?206104 Preheat temperature T0, K 298 373 473 523 298 373 523 473 523 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 473 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 Aspect ratio W/D 0?6 0?6 0?6 0?6 0?8 0?6 0?6 0?6 0?6 0?8 1?45 1?5 1?6 1?5 1?2 0?9 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?3 1?60 1?5 1?2 1?20 1?15 1?10 1?50 0?8 1?50 1?45 1?40 1?40 1?35 1?25 1?25 1?50 1?45 1?40 1?35 1?30 0?45 0?37 0?36 0?32 0?30 0?33 0?33 Thermal conductivity k, W m21 K21 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 26?8 27?1 27?1 27?1 30 21 21 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 36?4 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 Reference 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 15 16 16 16 17 18 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 21 22 22 22 22 22 22 22 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 24 24 24 24 24 24 24

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Cooling rate in 800 to 500uC range from dimensional analysis

Published by Maney Publishing (c) IOM Communications Ltd

2 Power law correlation between experimental average cooling rate4,1524 from 800 to 500uC and expression in x axis: all symbols are dened in text

4 Comparison of estimations of average cooling rates between 800 and 500uC by heat conduction model and proposed correlation (equation (10)) with respect to experimental cooling rates: experimental cooling rates are for various welding processes from literature4,1524

Figure 3 shows the computed cooling rates for various aspect ratios of the weld pool. Here it is observed that the ratio of cooling rate estimation by equation (10) to the experimental cooling rate is close to 1 for all values of the aspect ratio. This means that the proposed correlation in equation (10) estimates the cooling rates that are in good agreement with the experimentally measured cooling rates. In contrast, the ratio of cooling rate estimated by the heat conduction model to the experimental cooling rate is much greater than 1 for many cases. Especially, the cooling rates estimated from the heat conduction model are 1520 times greater than the experimental cooling rates for aspect ratios ,0?5, i.e. for the case of keyhole

mode of welding. In situations where the keyhole forms, the conduction equation can be modied by considering a line heat source and the cooling rates will be somewhat different from those shown in Fig. 3. However, the cooling rates calculated by equation (1) for high aspect ratios also do not produce satisfactory cooling rates as observed from Fig. 3. In contrast, cooling rates computed from equation (10) agree well with the experimental values of cooling rates both for the keyhole mode welding with aspect ratio ,0?5 and for other welds with much higher aspect ratios. The shape of the weld pool sometimes deviates considerably from a simple hemisphere. For such unusual shapes,12,25 where W/D may not fully represent the weld pool shape, equation (10) may not be strictly valid. The calculated average cooling rates R8/5 from equation (10) are plotted against the reported experimental cooling rates in Fig. 4. The computed values represent heat input values in the range of 36104 to 46106 J m21 and cooling rates from 5 to y120 K s21. It is observed that satisfactory agreement is achieved between the cooling rates calculated from equation (10) and the experimental cooling rates. A linear t with unit slope is shown in Fig. 4. The correlation coefcient R2 for the data shown in Fig. 3 is 0?965, where a R2 value of 1 would mean an exact match between the estimated and the experimental values.

Conclusions
A correlation based on dimensional analysis is proposed for the calculation of cooling rates in the 800 to 500uC range for steel welds. The correlation is tested for a wide range of welding processes, operating parameters and material properties by comparing the computed cooling rates with the corresponding experimental results. The correlation has been tested for heat input range between 36104 and 46106 J m21, and cooling rate values from y5 to 120 K s21. The t between the experimental cooling rates and the values computed from the proposed equation showed a correlation with R2 value of 0?965.

3 Ratio of average cooling rate between 800 and 500uC estimations by heat conduction model5 to experimental cooling rate4,1524 and ratio of estimation by equation (10) to experimental cooling rates,4,1524 with respect to weld pool aspect ratio W/D

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