In this study, the effect of oxygen in the shielding gas on the material flow behavior of the weld pool surface was discussed to clarify the dominant driving weld pool force in keyhole plasma arc welding (KPAW). To address this issue, the convection flow on the top surface of weld pool was observed using a high-speed video camera. The temperature distribution on the surface along keyhole wall was measured using the two-color pyrometry method to confirm the Marangoni force activity on the weld pool. The results show that the inclination angle of the keyhole wall (keyhole shape) increased especially near the top surface due to the decrease in the surface tension of weld pool through surface oxidation when a shielding gas of Ar + 0.5% O₂ was used. Due to the change in the keyhole shape, the upward and backward shear force compositions created a large inclination angle at the top surface of the keyhole. From the temperature measurement results, the Marangoni force was found to alter the direction when 0.5% O₂ was mixed with the shielding gas. The shear force was found to be the strongest force among the four driving forces. The buoyant force and Lorentz force were very weak. The Marangoni force was stronger than the Lorentz force but was weaker than shear force. The interaction of shear force and Marangoni force controlled the behavior and speed of material flow on the weld pool surface. A strong upward and backward flow was observed in the case of mixture shielding gas, whereas a weak upward flow was observed for pure Ar. The heat transportation due to the weld pool convection significantly changed when only a small amount of oxygen was admixed in the shielding gas. The results can be applied to control the penetration ratio in KPAW.

Nonwoven fabrics are widely used in the textile manufacturing industry due to their advanced characteristics, such as their soft, water-repellent, recycle, ecological, and resilient functions. Nowadays, one of the innovated technologies applied to bond nonwoven fabrics is the ultrasonic welding method, due to the advantages afforded by its clean, fast, and reliable approach. In this work, isotactic polypropylene (PP) nonwoven fabrics were bonded by a continuous ultrasonic welding process. In order to consider the influence of the roller on the formation of welding joints and their mechanical properties, different roller profiles were designed, fabricated, and tested. Eight types of roller profiles corresponding to No. 1–No. 8 in the experiments were divided into four groups. After bonding, the microstructure in a typical case (i.e., No. 1) was captured by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to examine the formation of the welding joints. Additionally, the load and the peel strength of the welding joints of all eight roller profiles were analyzed. The results showed that no welding defects, such as cracks or blowholes, were visible in the melted zone. The load depended on the area ratio(s) of the welding area (S₀) to the cycling area (S₁). Furthermore, it was found out that the peel strength of the welding joints with brick structures were higher than the peel strength in the case of solid line structures.

In the injection molding field, the flow of plastic material is one of the most important issues, especially regarding the ability of melted plastic to fill the thin walls of products. To improve the melt flow length, a high mold temperature was applied with pre-heating of the cavity surface. In this paper, we present our research on the injection molding process with pre-heating by external gas-assisted mold temperature control. After this, we observed an improvement in the melt flow length into thin-walled products due to the high mold temperature during the filling step. In addition, to develop the heating efficiency, a flow focusing device (FFD) was applied and verified. The simulations and experiments were carried out within an air temperature of 400 °C and heating time of 20 s to investigate a flow focusing device to assist with external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC), with the application of various FFD types for the temperature distribution of the insert plate. The heating process was applied for a simple insert model with dimensions of 50 mm × 50 mm × 2 mm, in order to verify the influence of the FFD geometry on the heating result. After that, Ex-GMTC with the assistance of FFD was carried out for a mold-reading process, and the FFD influence was estimated by the mold heating result and the improvement of the melt flow length using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). The results show that the air sprue gap (h) significantly affects the temperature of the insert and an air sprue gap of 3 mm gives the best heating rate, with the highest temperature being 321.2 °C. Likewise, the actual results show that the height of the flow focusing device (V) also influences the temperature of the insert plate and that a 5 mm high FFD gives the best results with a maximum temperature of 332.3 °C. Moreover, the heating efficiency when using FFD is always higher than without FFD. After examining the effect of FFD, its application was considered, in order to improve the melt flow length in injection molding, which increased from 38.6 to 170 mm, while the balance of the melt filling was also clearly improved.

The material flow dynamic and velocity distribution on the melted domain surface play a crucial role on the joint quality and formation of welding defects. In this study, authors investigated the effects of the low and high currents of plasma arc welding on the material flow and thermodynamics of molten pool and its relationship to the welding defects. The high-speed video camera (HSVC) was used to observe the convection of the melted domain and welded-joint appearance. Furthermore, to consider the Marangoni force activation, the temperature on the melted domain was measured by a thermal HSVC. The results revealed that the velocity distribution on the weld pool surface was higher than that inside the molten weld pool. Moreover, in the case of 80 A welding current, the convection speed of molten was faster than that in other cases (120 A and 160 A). The serious undercut and humping could be seen on the top surface (upper side) and unstable weld bead was visualized on the back side (bottom surface). In the case of 160 A welding current, the convection on the weld pool surface was much more complex in comparison with 80 A and 120 A cases. The excessive convex defect at the bottom side and the concave defect at the top surface were observed. In the case of 120 A welding current, two convection patterns with the main flow in the backward direction were seen. Almost no welding defect could be found. The interaction between the shear force and Marangoni force played a solid state on the convection and heat transportation processes in the plasma arc welding process.

Ultrasonic welding has been applied for joining thermoplastic components due to their advantages such as clean, fast and reliable. The basic principle is to use the mechanical energy of ultrasonic frequency vibration to produce the molten pool at the interface of the joined components under high pressure to create solid-state welding joints. Depending on the specific application, the ultrasonic horn is designed to generate suitable amplitudes on the surface of the welding zone. Uniformity of the amplitudes can be a challenge as the welding area increases. Therefore, design a welding horn in order to obtain the uniform amplitudes at the large area is significant difficult. This work presents a method for obtaining the uniform amplitudes at the working surface of the stepped wide-blade horn. Finite element method is used to analyze the amplitude distribution at the horn surface of 250 x 34 mm 2 with working frequency of 15 kHz and aluminum alloy 7075. The uniformity of amplitude is obtained by changing the shape of the horn.

This work investigates the application of ultrasonic vibration to steel joints formed by gas metal arc welding. Welding is done using a metal active gas welding source with welding current of 120–160 A, 0.8 mm diameter welding wire and 10 l min ⁻¹ CO ₂ flow. The distance from the torch to the ultrasonic horn is 120 mm. Ultrasonic vibration most affects the weld when ultrasonic vibration position is 120 mm from torch and increases the penetration when welding speed is 190 (275) mm/min for a 5 mm thick (10 mm thick) plate. Moreover, weld width increases when welding speed is 190 mm min ⁻¹ for 10 mm thick plate. Although ultrasonic vibration does not affect the hardness of welding zones, it modifies the microstructure of the diffusion and welding-pool zones.