Effects of activating fluxes on the weld penetration and corrosion

resistant property of laser welded joint of ferritic stainless steel

Yonghui Wang*a,b,c, Shengsun Hu a,b, and Junqi Shen a,b
a
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Joining Technology, Tianjin 300072, China;
b
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China;
c
Chinergy. Co. Ltd, Beijing 100193, China.
*wyh_tju@sina.com; phone 86 10 82506179; fax 86 10 82506180

ABSTRACT

This study was based on the ferritic stainless steel SUS430. Under the parallel welding conditions, the critical
penetration power values (CPPV) of 3mm steel plates with different surface-coating activating fluxes were tested.
Results showed that, after coating with activating fluxes, such as ZrO2, CaCO3, CaF2 and CaO, the CPPV could reduce
100~250 W, which indicating the increases of the weld penetrations (WP). Nevertheless, the variation range of WP with
or without activating fluxes was less than 16.7%. Compared with single-component ones, a multi-component activating
flux composed of 50% ZrO2, 12.09% CaCO3, 10.43% CaO, and 27.49% MgO was testified to be much more efficient,
the WP of which was about 2.3-fold of that without any activating fluxes. Furthermore, a FeCl3 spot corrosion
experiment was carried out with samples cut from weld zone to test the effects of different activating fluxes on the
corrosion resistant (CR) property of the laser welded joints. It was found that all kinds of activating fluxes could improve
the CR of the welded joints. And, it was interesting to find that the effect of the mixed activating fluxes was inferior to
those single-component ones. Among all the activating fluxes, the single-component of CaCO3 seemed to be the best in
resisting corrosion. By means of Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) testing, it was found that the use of activating
fluxes could effectively restrain the loss of Cr element of weld zone in the process of laser welding, thus greatly
improving the CR of welded joints.
Keywords: Activating flux, laser welding, ferritic stainless steel, weld penetration, corrosion resistant property.

1. INTRODUCTION
Austenitic stainless steel is one of the most important kinds of metal materials both in production and usage. In recent
years, the shortage of nickel resources leads to the soaring price of nickel products, including the austenitic stainless steel.
Compared with austenitic stainless steel, ferritic stainless steel, which containing a much smaller amount of nickel,
possessing a smaller thermal expansion coefficient, performing better thermal conductivity, and showing stronger
resistance to chloride stress corrosion as well as pitting corrosion, has drawing more attention.1-2 Nevertheless, the
ferritic stainless steel’s high sensitivity to heat input which may cause the coarsening of grains in the heat-affected zone
and weld metal, limits its application.3 Nowadays, with the development of Argon Oxygen Decarburization (AOD) and
advanced smelting technology such as vacuum smelting, ferritic stainless steel with high purity as well as superior weld
ability has been produced. On the other hand, the emergence of advanced welding methods with high energy density and
high speed (e. g. laser welding) make it possible to lower the heat input during welding, which helps to alleviate the
problem of grains coarsening.4

At present, the output power of laser generators is not large enough, and what’s worse, due to the reflection of the
workpieces, the utilization rate of laser beam is low. Owing to these reasons, the weld penetration (WP) is shallow and
the welding cost soars sharply with the increasing thickness of the workpieces.2 Since activating fluxes were first used in
tungsten inert gas welding (TIG) by the scientists of Paton Welding Institute (PWI) in Ukraine in the 1960s, it had been
demonstrated that activating fluxes could improve the WP remarkably when keeping the heat input the same.5-10 Studies
on laser welding with activating fluxes were not reported until 2001, Kuo et al. found that activating fluxes could
improve the WP of mild steel and austenitic stainless steel in laser welding.11 However, few researchers paid attention to
the effect of activating fluxes on ferritic stainless steel during laser welding.12-13 In this work, the influences of different
single-component activating fluxes as well as multi-component ones on the WP and corrosion resistant (CR) property of
ferritic stainless steel in laser welding were studied.

AOPC 2015: Micro/Nano Optical Manufacturing Technologies; and Laser Processing and Rapid
Prototyping Techniques, edited by Lin Li, Minghui Hong, Lan Jiang, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9673,
967304 · © 2015 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/15/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2199289

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 2. EXPERIMENTAL SECTION
In the experiment, SUS 430 ferritic stainless steel plates (300 mm × 150 mm × 3 mm) produced by Baoshan Iron & Steel
Co. Ltd were used. A Nd:YAG laser welding system (JK2003SM) was applied, the peak power of which was 2kW. All
the plates were welded under the same laser welding parameters with Ma et al., with only the power outputs changed.2
Before welding, all the surfaces of the steel plates were ground and cleaned with absolute alcohol. Each time, about 5g of
the activating fluxes powder was mixed with certain amount of absolute alcohol. After stirring, the paintlike consistency
was painted on the zone.

After welding, samples of weld cross-sections were produced using standard procedures including grinding, polishing
and etching, and observed by optical microscope. The WP data was recorded. A FeCl3 spot corrosion experiment was
carried out according to GB17897-1999. Samples cut from welded joints of different activating fluxes were dipped in
6% FeCl3 solution for 24h at a constant temperature of 35.5°C. The loss weight was tested with a Sartorius
FA2104B electronic balance to calculate the corrosion rate of the samples.

3. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Effect of single-component activating fluxes on WP

To preliminarily discover the effects of different kinds of single-component activating fluxes on the WP of SUS430
stainless steel, three types of common inorganic materials were selected as activating fluxes. As listed in Table 1, there
were 8 oxides, 5 halides, and 5 carbonates. Under the parallel welding condition shown in Table 1, the critical
penetration power values (CPPV) for SUS430 steel plates of 3mm with different single component activating fluxes
were tested. The tests began with low power and successively increased by 50 W until the steel plates were penetrated.
The penetrating power values were identified as the CPPV of the activating fluxes.

It was found that, among the activating fluxes tested, ZrO2, CaCO3, CaF2, CaO and MgO performed best in reducing the
CPPV of SUS430 ferritic stainless steel, indicating the increase of WP. Nevertheless, the variation range of WP with or
without activating fluxes was not significant, and the range was less than 16.7%.

Table 1. CPPV of different activating fluxes.

No. Type.of activating fluxes CPPV/W
1 Without flux 1500
2 B2O3 1550
3 Cr2O3 1560
4 TiO2 1500
5 MnO2 1550
Oxide
6 ZnO 1500
7 CaO 1400
8 MgO 1410
9 ZrO2 1250
10 NaF 1460
Halide
11 CaF2 1350
12 KCl 1450
13 MgF2 1455
14 AlF3 1455
15 CaCO3 1310
16 K2CO3 1500
17 Carbonate Li2CO3 1550
18 MgCO3 1450
19 Na2CO3 1510

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 3.2 Effect of multi-component activating fluxes on WP

Based on the CPPV results of single activating fluxes, the influences of mixed activating fluxes on the WP were also
studied. Compounds of CaO, MgO, ZrO2, and CaCO3 which performed much better than other fluxes in reducing the
CPPV, were selected as the ingredients of multi-component activating flux, and used for uniform design. With the
software of MINITAB, the 20 formulas of multi-component activating fluxes were worked out and the data were shown
in Table 2. Then, the 20 fluxes were prepared and used in laser welding (the power was set at 1200W). After welding,
ratio of the WP with and without activating flux (R) were tested.

Table 2. Mixed-Flux composition experiment design and result.2

No. ZrO2 CaCO3 CaO MgO R
1 0.7076 0.1701 0.0948 0.0275 1.97
2 0.5783 0.1635 0.1356 0.1227 2.08
3 0.5 0.1209 0.1043 0.2749 2.23
4 0.4407 0.0669 0.0123 0.4801 1.59
5 0.3918 0.0077 0.4955 0.1051 1.44
6 0.3497 0.4204 0.1322 0.0977 1.59
7 0.3125 0.2956 0.1274 0.2646 1.84
8 0.2789 0.1986 0.0392 0.4833 1.56
9 0.2482 0.1117 0.5602 0.08 1.14
10 0.2198 0.0298 0.469 0.2814 1.27
11 0.1933 0.5858 0.0828 0.1381 1.20
12 0.1684 0.3955 0.0545 0.3816 1.04
13 0.145 0.2657 0.5451 0.0442 1.27
14 0.1228 0.1565 0.4865 0.2342 1.04
15 0.1016 0.058 0.3571 0.4832 0.92
16 0.0815 0.7733 0.0254 0.1198 1.16
17 0.0621 0.493 0.4338 0.0111 1.34
18 0.0435 0.3329 0.4521 0.1715 1.20
19 0.0257 0.2041 0.3659 0.4044 1.25
20 0.0084 0.0909 0.2026 0.698 1.19

As shown in Table 2 and Figure 1, the 3rd formula was the optimal one that got the deepest penetration, which was 2.23
times as large as that without fluxes. The microstructure of the specimens above were examined by a OLYMPUS DP70,
the maximum capacity of which was 2000× magnification. Figure 2 showed two groups of pictures taken from the weld
zone, one was for the specimen without activating flux and the other for the optima activating flux (50% ZrO2, 12.09%
CaCO3, 10.43% CaO, and 27.49% MgO). It could be found that the microstructure were nearly the same after the use of
activating fluxes.

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 (a) Without activating flux (b) With the 3rd activating flux
Figure 1. Macro photos of the welds (20×).

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 2. Micro photos of the welds: (a) Without activating flu (200×); (b) Without activating flux (500×); (c) With the 3rd activating
flux (200×); (d) With the 3rd activating flux (500×).

3.3 Effect of activating fluxes on the CR

Additionally, a FeCl3 spot corrosion experiment was carried out to test the effects of different activating fluxes on the
corrosion resistant property of the laser welded joints, the results were shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Results of FeCl3 spot corrosion experiment of ferric stainless steel.

Type l/mm w/mm d/mm S/mm2 W1/g W2/g K/g·m-2·h-1
Parent Metal 29.70 29.76 3.08 21.34 20.55 19.34 23.51
Without flux 29.74 29.74 3.10 21.38 20.73 19.00 33.84
ZrO2 29.74 29.66 3.10 21.32 20.79 19.48 25.61
CaCO3 29.62 29.40 3.12 21.10 20.45 19.25 23.72
3rd formula 29.72 29.68 3.08 21.30 20.66 19.19 28.73
l refers to length of the specimen; w refers to width of the specimen; d refers to depth of the;
specimen; S refers to the Total Surface Area of the specimen; W1 refers to the weight of the
specimen before corrosion; W2 refers to the weight of the specimen after corrosion; K refers to the
corrosion rate of the specimen.

It was found that, with the parallel laser welding condition (the laser power was set at 1300W), all kinds of activating
fluxes could enhance the CR property of the welded joints. And, it was interesting to find that the effects of the 3rd
multi-activating flux was inferior to those single-component ones used though it performed much more excellent
property in increasing the WP. Among all the activating fluxes, the single-component of CaCO3 performed best to
improve the CR property of the welded joints.

By means of Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS), the chemical composition of the weld joints with different single-
component activating fluxes, with the optimal multi-component activating flux (50% ZrO2, 12.09% CaCO3, 10.43% CaO,

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 and 27.48% MgO), and without any activating flux were tested to monitor the changes of elements of the weld metal
after laser welding. As shown in Figure 3, with the use of activating fluxes, the content of Cr in the weld zone seemed to
be higher than the one without any flux. It was noteworthy that the content of Cr in the weld zone of the specimen for
single-component activating flux CaCO3 stayed in a very high level, which was even close to the content of parent metal,
so that the CR was excellent. Because of the close relation between the CR of stainless steel and the content of Cr in it,
the effect of activating fluxes on the elements of molten weld pools will directly lead to the change of CR performance
of the welded joints.

Element Wt% At%,

CKa 00.30, 01.37,
SiK. 00.71, 01.37,
CrK. 16.18. 16.87,
FeK. 82.81, 80.39
MntriY. Correction, ZAF

(a) Without activating flux.

"-'7E1:?2"
,00

II0 90aJ.IOD

c'L8'Z8
c'TT'9T
c'Z6'00
c'OT'00
171.911101.7

(b) With ZrO2.

"-'7E1:?:%"

Coirection,

(c) With CaCO3.

"-'7E1:?1"
",
Element Wt% At%
CK. 00.12. 00.54,
SiK., 00.42., 00.82.,
CrK. 16.02., 16.86.,
FeK. 83.44, 81.78.
.3latrir= Correction., ZAF.

(d) The 3rd multi-component activating flux.

Figure 3. Composition analysis of welded joints.

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 4. CONCLUSION
(1) Among the single-component activating fluxes, ZrO2, CaCO3, CaF2, CaO, and MgO performed better in reducing the
CPPV of SUS430 ferritic stainless steel. Based on that, a optimal formula was developed, with which the WP was 2.23
times as large as that without flux.
(2) With the use of activating fluxes, the content of Cr in the weld zone seemed to be higher than that without any flux.
The content of Cr in the specimen of single-component activating flux CaCO3 stayed in a very high level, which was
close to the content of parent metal, so that the CR was excellent.
(3) The mechanism of how activating fluxes help to enhance the CR of the welded joints was proposed as an effective
restrain of the loss of Cr element in the process of laser welding.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work was supported by the Research Institute, Baoshan Iron & Steel Co.Ltd.

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