The aim of this work was to determine the behavior of the gross melting efficiency in arc welding towards different types of materials (carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum alloy). An extra objective was to indirectly estimate the thermal efficiency of the process using the estimation of isotherms by analytic methods. For that, welds were carried out over three materials at two welding current levels using the GTAW process. It was verified that the melting efficiency is very low (lower than 10%), yet it rises by increasing the current level (effect of material size). The aluminum alloy presented the lowest melting efficiency in contrast to the highest heat yield of the stainless steel. With respect to the thermal efficiency, the proposed methodology was not adequate.
Welding; Melting Efficiency; Thermal Efficiency; AC GTAW
