Experimental Investigation on Thin Sheets of SS316L in Gas Tungsten Arc Welding Process

The grades of stainless steel have several applications such as aerospace, medical, power plants, and automobile industry. Especially stainless steel 316L (SS316L) has been successfully utilized in many sectors because of its excellent corrosion resistance, self-healing property, biocompatibility, high fatigue life and creep resistance. This reported work is a study of SS316L in gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) in order to enhance the strength of the weldment. The GTAW butt joint of SS316L was subjected to microhardness measurement. The results show that fusion zone has a high hardness number when compared to base material and heat affected zone has heterogeneous hardness distribution. Tensile results of butt joint and the base material of SS316L indicates that welded material has more tensile strength than the base material which shows that the weld is of high quality.