A study on heat flow and thermal distortion in terms of air-carbon-arc gouging of steel plates

In groove design, a proper shape should be chosen during the preparation for the welding of thick plates of steel structures to minimize the potential for any welding deformations. While the effect of welding on both sides of the plate in terms of the deformation potential is a foremost consideration during the groove-design process, the effect of gouging is not included even though it involves the usage of a high-heat arc input that may significantly influence the welding-deformation potential. In this study, the effect of the air-carbon-arc gouging process on the deformation of steel plates was investigated using a numerical finite element method analysis. For this purpose, the heat input from the gouging torch was first modeled using an analytical solution that is based on the Rosenthal equation. The model was then used as a heat input for the thermo-mechanical steel-plate-gouging model that is proposed in this study to obtain deformation estimations during the gouging process. A series of numerical analyses were carried out to predict the deformations according to changes in the plate thickness. The results of the analyses were found to be in sound agreement with those of the experiments that were performed to verify the simulations. The comparison revealed that the models that are proposed in this study are feasible ways of estimating the deformation caused by the gouging on steel plates.