Numerical study on the temperature field of underwater flux-cored wire arc cutting process

The fast development of ocean engineering makes the underwater cutting more and more important. In present study, a special underwater wet cutting method, namely the underwater flux-cored wire arc cutting (FCAC) was introduced. The underwater cutting experiment was conducted using flux-cored wire cutting method, and experimental as well as numerical analysis was carried out to investigate the temperature field during underwater FCAC process. According to the mechanism of the underwater FCAC, double ellipsoid heat source model considering arc heat as well as chemical heat was introduced, and the boundary condition of pool boiling heat transfer was selected. The calculated thermal cycles during underwater FCAC process match well with those acquired by the experiment, which proves the model and boundary condition in this study to be applicable for underwater FCAC. It is found that the calculated t8/5 value is shorter than 0.5 s, which is much shorter than the one of air-arc cutting process and the one of underwater welding process. In addition, the heat affected zone (HAZ) near the cut cavity is determined, which is expected to facilitate the further research on the cutting mechanism, as well as the optimization of cutting parameters.