Weld Cladding with Austenitic Stainless Steel for Imparting Corrosion Resistance

Weld cladding is a process of depositing a thick layer of a material on a corrosion-, or erosion-, prone material to protect it from corrosion or erosion respectively. In this process, service life of the clad component increases substantially even under hostile conditions. In the present work, austenitic stainless steel cladding is done on low alloy steel specimens to make the clad components resistant to corrosion wearing under a chemically reactive environment. Corrosion-resistance characteristics of clad layer is explored along with its dependency on clad bead geometry, clad composition, etc. that are controlled by process parameters. It is, therefore, essential to select appropriate process parameters to obtain sound clad quality. Experiments are conducted on cladding with austenitic stainless steel on low alloy steel plates under varying conditions using gas metal arc welding. Performance of cladding is experimentally explored to find out suitable parameter combination to obtain high corrosion resistance. At 100 A weld current, 8.7 mm/s torch travel speed and 24 V weld voltage, minimum corrosion rate is seen, and hence, may be adopted in practice.