Characterization of the aerosols resulting from arc welding processes

As a result of recent research on the potentially adverse health effects of sub-micrometer aerosols, a generation chamber and sampling system was desi gned to characterize aerosols from a popular welding system that utilized e ither gas metal are welding or flux cored are welding techniques. The exper imental apparatus allowed flexibility in changing are welding parameters, s ample locations, and was designed to promote the steady-state generation of fumes over several minutes. In contrast to prior studies where the particl e size distribution was weighted by mass without regard to its time/tempera ture history, the wedding aerosols in this study were temporally collected and weighted by a lower moment, particle number. The results demonstrated t hat the welding alloy had a marked effect on the particle size distribution , morphology and chemical aspects of the resultant fume. In addition, the p article size distributions from these processes were multi-modal and dynami cally changed with time. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .