Despite its well-reported application in a few welding processes, the use of reinforcing powders in weld joints to improve weld integrity has not garnered ample research attention for Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process. In this study, the adoption of Titanium alloy powders as metallic reinforcement for mild steel butt welds was investigated. By adopting Taguchi’s L4 orthogonal array, process optimisation for titanium-reinforced mild steel butt welds were first carried out. In the second phase of welding, the optimum parameters were used to create and compare two sets of weldments; one set was reinforced with titanium alloy powder and the other set left unreinforced. It was observed that in the Weld Metal (WM) region, the titanium-reinforced samples had higher micro-hardness values than their unreinforced counterparts with an average of 285.62 HV and 211.6 HV respectively. However, there was no substantial improvement in the ultimate tensile strength of the mild steel butt welds due to titanium powder reinforcements. Interestingly, the formation of acicular ferrite microstructure was more prevalent in the titanium-reinforced weldments and this was attributed to the presence of titanium inclusions in the weld metal. This prevalence of acicular ferrite suggests improved toughness properties in the weld joint region. While the higher hardness values in the Weld Metal of the reinforced sample indicates improved wear resistance.

Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) is widely used to perform cladding so as to enhance corrosion resistance and several other properties of substrate material. However, the success of cladding us-ing GMAW depends on the optimal selection of its critical parameters. Therefore, in this study, the cladding of stainless steel over mild steel substrate using GMAW process is investigated with an aim to optimize the GMAW process parameters. Three GMAW process parameters i.e. current, voltage, and torch angle were selected and their effect on the time required to complete the cladding and arc power was investigated and optimized. Multiple objective optimization based on ratio anal-ysis (MOORA) method was employed to evaluate and optimize the effect of the selected process parameters. It was found that the current and voltage have significant effect in reducing the time and power required for the cladding process.