Selection of welding process for hardfacing on carbon steels based on quantitative and qualitative factors

Weld hardfacing techniques are employed mainly to extend or improve the service life of engineering components either by rebuilding or by fabricating in such a way as to produce a composite wall section to combat wear, erosion, corrosion, etc. In this paper, an attempt has been made to determine the best welding process to hardface boiler grade steels based on quantitative factors (by measuring percentage of dilution) and qualitative factors (using the analytic hierarchy process [AHP]). Five different welding processes including shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), gas metal arc welding (GMAW), gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), submerged arc welding (SAW), and plasma transferred arc welding (PTAW) have been compared. Based on the quantitative and qualitative factors, the PTAW process is found to be the best method to hardface boiler grade steels.