Prediction of welding bead geometry for wire arc additive manufacturing of SS308l walls using response surface methodology

Abstract

In the wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process, the geometry of single welding beads has significant effects on the stability process and the final quality and shape of manufactured parts. In this paper, the geometry of single welding beads of 308L stainless steel was predicted as functions of process parameters (i.e. welding current I, voltage U, and travel speed v) by using the response surface methodology (RSM). A set of experimental runs was carried out by using the Box-Behnken design method. The adequacy of the developed models was assessed by using an analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicate that the RSM allows the predictive models of bead width (BW) and bead height (BH) to be developed with a high accuracy: R2-values of BW and BH are 99.01% and 99.61%, respectively. The errors between the predicted and experimental values for the confirmatory experiments are also lower than 5% that again confirms the adequacy of the developed models. These developed models can efficiently be used to predict the desirable geometry of welding beads for the adaptive slicing principle in WAAM.