Investigation of the effect of current intensity and frequency in PC-GTAW on microstructural evolutions of weld joints of Hastelloy B-2 superalloy

The welding of Hastelloy B-2 Ni-Mo base superalloy was carried out with the aim of investigating the effect of current intensity and frequency on the microstructural evolutions of the welded areas. For this purpose, the PC-GTAW process and the ERNiCrMo-2 filler metal was used. While other parameters were kept constant in this process, the frequency was changed at 10, 30 and 50 Hz, and pulse current was changed in the form of 80:20 and 60:40. The effect of current intensity and frequency on the microstructure of the weld metal was investigated by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and EDS accessory was employed for analyzing the precipitates formed. The results showed that a decrease in the maximum current intensity led to a reduction in the heat input applied to the workpiece, resulting in a severe decrease in the size of the dendrites in the weld metal along with a reduction in the grain size of the HAZ and eventually, a significant decrease in the amount of molybdenum carbides in interdendritic regions of the weld metal will be resulted. By increasing the frequency led to increasing the width and the depth of weld. With increasing the frequency, the overlapping of the pulses increases and the heat is applied the molten pool at a shorter time interval and thus, the weld dimensions increase. The microstructural studies showed that increasing the frequency led to an increase in dendrites of the weld metal along with an increase in the extent of the HAZ.