POWER CHARACTERISTICS IN GMAW - EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION

The voltage and power distributions in gas metal arc welding (GMAW) we re studied both experimentally and numerically. The principal voltage drop takes place in the arc, which also constitutes the dominant power contribution. Within the arc, the dominating voltage contributions ar e from the arc column and the cathode fall, while the anode fall and t he electrode regions are less significant. The power input to the are column increases with both increasing current and increasing are lengt h. These results indicate that it is critical to control the are lengt h in order to control the power input to the system.