Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

A modified Fowler–Milne method for monochromatic image analysis

in multi-element arc plasma welding
Xiao Xiao a,b , Xueming Hua a,b,∗ , Fang Li a,b , Yixiong Wu a,b
a
Welding Engineering Technology Research Institute of Materials Science and Engineering (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Shanghai 200240, People’s
Republic of China
b
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Materials Laser Processing and Modification (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Shanghai 200240, People’s Republic of China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The monochromatic images of 794.8 nm Ar I and 487.98 nm Ar II spectrums are obtained by high speed
Received 6 December 2013 camera, and these images are normalized with respect to their relative maximum emission coefficient
Received in revised form 20 May 2014 in a pure argon (single element) arc. The relative maximum emission coefficient of 487.98 nm Ar II is
Accepted 25 May 2014
calculated based on Olsen-Richter diagram. Unlike other spectroscopic methods, the presented method
Available online 2 June 2014
does not require spectra scan or the maximum emission coefficient of non-argon elements. This technique
is applied to the measurement of radial profile of temperature and gas composition of argon–helium arc
Keywords:
plasma in gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), significant demixing occurs in the argon–helium arc plasma.
GTAW
Arc plasma
Helium concentration in arc plasma is higher than that in original gas mixture, and it decreases as the point
Mixture shielding gas moves away from the axis along radial direction and increases as the point gets closer to the cathode. The
calculated arc temperature and gas composition are compared with the data obtained using conventional
method where a spectrometer is used for spectral line intensity measurement and two-line relative
intensity method for calculation. Very good agreements have been observed. That means, the developed
technique measures arc temperature and gas composition as accurate as the conventional spectroscopic
methods. With the usage of a high speed camera, the developed technique enables measurement of arc
temperature and gas composition distribution in a dynamic arc such as arc ignition, pulsing arc.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Various gas mixtures are used in industrial processes to gener-
ate electric arcs. For example, mixtures of carbon dioxide and argon
are often used in arc welding processes in welding steels, and mix-
tures of helium and argon are commonly used in welding Al alloys.
Due to existence of gas demixing in the welding processes, it is
unrealistic to assume uniform gas concentration in the arc, even
for gases being fully mixed before being introduced into the arc
region Murphy (1997). Demixing influences thermal and electri-
cal behaviors of the gas mixture and hence affects its resulted arc
physical property. This paper studies temperature and gas compo-
sition of an argon–helium arc plasma in a gas tungsten arc welding
process.
∗ Corresponding author at: Welding Engineering Technology Research Institute
of Materials Science and Engineering (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Shanghai
200240, People’s Republic of China. Tel.: +86 13661554311.
E-mail address: xmhua@sjtu.edu.cn (X. Hua).
Over the past decades, different methods have been used to
study physical, thermal and electrical properties of a multi-element
welding arc plasma. Some scholars used numerical models inves-
tigating free burning arcs. Lowke et al. (1997) simulated the
arc temperatures in mixtures of argon and hydrogen, Murphy
(1994a) predicted the dominant demixing process in a mixture of
nitrogen and argon arc plasma, and Murphy et al. (2009) inves-
tigated the influence of adding helium, hydrogen and nitrogen
to the argon shielding gas. These numerical models were based
on strong assumption and approximation, the calculated results
often required verification by experiments. Other scholars carried
out experiments measuring temperature and gas composition in
multi-element arc plasmas. Song (1990) used absolute intensity
of Ar I and H␣ line to determine temperature and gas compo-
sition of argon–hydrogen arc plasma, while Li et al. (1993) used
Ar I and N I line to determine temperature and gas composi-
tion of argon–nitrogen arc plasma. The principle of this method
is simple, but the experiment system needs to be calibrated very
often. Because small variation in optical equipment setup affected
intensity value a lot, and caused error in temperature and gas com-
position measurement. This method also required knowledge of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.05.026
0924-0136/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776
spectroscopic data such as transition probability. However, the
values available in the literatures shown in Hiraoka et al. (1997)
were very different. These differences were expected to cause
errors in temperature and gas composition calculations. Hiraoka
used a spectroscopic technique and two-line intensity correlation
method to measure temperature and composition distribution in
the multi-element arc plasma. It involved measurement of the rel-
ative intensity of Ar I and Ar II lines (Hiraoka, 1993) or Ar I and H I
lines (Hiraoka, 1998) to obtain temperature distribution of Ar–He
or Ar–H2 mixed-gas tungsten arc plasma, and found the helium
concentration on the axis of arcs in various-percentage mixtures
of argon and helium. However, this method also required values of
the atomic transition probabilities. Murphy (1994b) chose Ar I and
N I spectra, used a modified Fowler–Milne method to measure the
radial profiles of temperature and gas composition of free-burning
arcs in mixtures of argon and nitrogen. This method did not require
frequent calibration of test apparatus and knowledge of the atomic
transition probability. The technique allowed the relative concen-
tration of gas elements to be derived more precisely than other
spectroscopic methods.
All of above-mentioned experimental studies used spectrome-
ters for measurement. These spectrometers measured intensity
of the spectral lines point by point and were not able to follow
dynamic process in the whole arcs. However, monochromatic
image method which uses a high resolution and high speed camera
allows recording dynamic change of arc plasma in one measure-
ment. Ma used this method in measuring temperature of pure argon
plasma in GTAW both during arc ignition (Ma et al., 2011a) and
at stable stage (Ma et al., 2008). Ma et al. (2011b) also applied
this method during pulsed GTAW process, and Wang et al. (2013)
analyzed characteristic of transient variation in pulsed GTAW. It
showed good time and spatial resolutions. However, application of
this method in measuring temperature and gas composition of a
multi-element arc plasma has not been found and the measure-
ment resolution has not been investigated.
In the following study, the monochromatic image method
is applied in measuring temperature and gas composition of
argon–helium arc plasma. A high speed camera is used to obtain
monochromatic image, and modified Fowler–Milne method is used
to measure temperature and gas composition of arc plasma with
mixture of argon–helium in GTAW. When Murphy (1994b) devel-
oped the modified Fowler–Milne method, the argon and nitrogen
gas mixture was being studied. Argon and nitrogen have similar
first ionization energy and similar density; hence their normal tem-
peratures are similar. However, in our study, the method is used to
deal with the argon–helium gas mixture. The first ionization energy
of helium is much larger than that of argon, the density of helium
Fig. 1. High speed camera acquisition system.
2771
is much lighter than that of argon, as a result, their normal temper-
atures are very different. In fact, the normal temperatures of He I is
above the temperature of arc plasma, and the maximum emission
coefficient could not be measured. Since the Fowler–Milne method
requires that the maximum emission coefficient of the gas element
being used for calculation, Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II 487.98 nm spec-
tral lines are chosen in the study since the maximum emission
coefficient could be obtained through Olsen-Richter diagram. Sec-
tion 2 of the paper describes our test system. Section 3 explains the
modified Fowler–Milne method and its application in dealing with
the argon–helium gas mixture. Distribution of temperature and gas
composition are calculated and analyzed in Section 4. Conclusions
are presented in Section 5.
2. Experimental
2.1. Arc plasma source
Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of the experimental sys-
tem. In this experiment, a direct current (DC) arc was struck in
the mixture of argon and helium at atmospheric pressure by weld-
ing power supply (OTC-DA300P), it was free burning between
a tungsten cathode and a stationary water-cooled copper plate
anode.
The cathode was a thoriated tungsten rod (diameter 2.4 mm)
ground to a conical tip with an included angle being 60◦ . The
copper-plate anode was situated vertically below the cathode at
a distance of 5 mm from the cathode tip. Argon (50% in volume)
and helium (50% in volume) were used as the shielding gas feed-
ing from the cathode nozzle with a flow rate of 10 L min−1 , and the
electrical current of this arc plasma was 200 A.
2.2. Spectral system
Radiations from the arc were measured using a filter
monochrome, which consisted of camera lens, neutral density fil-
ters, narrow bandpass filters, and a high-speed camera (Fig. 1).
Camera lens (AF Micro-Nikkor 60 mm f/2.8D) was placed 0.35 m
away from the arc, thus the parallel-ray projection condition
assumed in the Abel inversion can be approximately satisfied.
In this test, 3 nm FWHM (full width at half maximum) narrow
bandpass filters was mounted before the camera lens, and no
other spectral line was found except for the interested one. In
front of the narrow bandpass filter, neutral density filters were
placed to reduce the strong radiation from the arc. In such a cir-
cumstance, with the aperture of the camera lens being carefully
tuned, the image with maximum intensity but unsaturated was
2772 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776
Fig. 2. Emission spectra distribution between 450 nm and 860 nm and spectra
passed through the two narrow bandpass filters in a 200-A free-burning arc with
input gas 50%Ar + 50%He.
obtained. After passing through the filter and the lens, the high
speed camera (MV-D1024-TrackCam) was capable of capturing 8-
bit gray images (264 × 200 pixels of CMOS sensor) for Ar I 794.8 nm
at a frame rate of 997 Hz (corresponding to exposure time of
0.18 ms).
The arc spectra were also recorded by a grating spectrometer for
choosing spectra and comparison. Fig. 2 shows the arc spectra in
the wavelength range 450–860 nm measured in the column region
of the arc at a distance of 2 mm from the cathode tip, which contains
the Ar I, Ar II and He I spectral lines. The Ar I 794.8 nm line and Ar
II 487.98 nm line were used to characterize the plasma properties.
The reason to choose these lines was that they were well separated
from other lines and the line intensity was not weak. Although the
He I 587.6 nm spectral line was also strong, the relative maximum
emission coefficient in pure helium couldn’t be measured by the
Fowler–Milne method, so spectral line of He I could not be selected.
The 3.0 nm FWHM narrow bandpass filter centered at wavelength
794.8 nm and 487.98 nm was used to acquire the line intensity dis-
tributions. Fig. 2 (short dash line and dash line) also shows the
transmittance curve of the narrow bandpass filters. The spectra of
the arc that passed through the filter were recorded using a spec-
troscopic analysis system; no other spectral line was found except
for the one of interest. For high speed camera system, the acquired
images captured the intensities of the Ar I 794.8 nm line and the Ar
II 487.98 nm line, and the continuum radiation near them.
3. Principle of temperature and composition measurement
Since the measurements are line-of-sight integrated intensi-
ties, for the determination of plasma parameters such as the
particle temperature and gas composition, the distribution of
emission coefficients must be reconstructed. This is accomplished
by means of an Abel inversion, provided the plasma is cylin-
drically symmetric and optically thin. For Abel inversion, the
continuous radiation is ignored since the intensity of continuum
radiation for both Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II 487.98 nm in spec-
trum measurement are very weak, especially compared with their
line spectrum. Then, the side-on measured spectral line inten-
sity profiles is symmetrized, noise filtered, and Bockasten method
(Ding and Pan, 1987) is used to convert intensity to emission
coefficient.
Table 1
Physical property of argon and helium.
Gas Weight Density Ionization energy Excitation energy
(kg/m3 ) (ev) (ev)
He 4 0.178 24.47 19.77
Ar 39.9 1.784 15.69 11.548
The total line emission coefficient εnm of a transition from a level
m to a lower level n of a specie j in a plasma is given by Lancaster
(1984)
hc nj (T ) Em
 
εnm = gm Anm exp − (1)
4nm Uj (T ) kT
where nj (T) and Uj (T) are respectively the number density and the
partition function of the species j, Em and gm are the energy and
statistical weight of the upper level, Anm is the transition probabil-
ity, nm is the wavelength of the radiation emitted, and c, h, and k
are respectively the speed of light in a vacuum, Planck’s constant,
and Boltzmann’s constant. Hence, the intensity of emission from a
single spectral line depends on the temperature T and the number
density nj of the emitting species. If the plasma is in local thermal
equilibrium (LTE), and only one chemical element is present in the
plasma, the relationship between T and nj can be calculated using
Saha equilibrium, and measurement of the intensity of radiation
emitted by a single line is sufficient to determine both T and nj .
However, if two or more chemical elements are present in the
plasma, nj is dependent on both temperature T and the mole frac-
tion of gas composition YJ of the chemical element J from which
the specie j is derived. Because of demixing, YJ usually depends
strongly on position, hence measurement of emission from a single
line is insufficient to determine T or nj . To determine these quan-
tities requires measurement of emission from lines of at least k
species, where k is the number of chemical elements being present.
Murphy (1994b) extended the Fowler–Milne method to allow
treatment of an arc in a mixture of two gases(argon–nitrogen arc
in his study). Because of the great differences between argon and
helium, as shown in Table 1, this method has not been used in
argon–helium arc.
Fig. 3 shows the temperature dependence of the emission coef-
ficient of an Ar I 794.8 nm line and an Ar II 487.98 nm line for
mixtures of argon and helium in different proportions. The emis-
sion coefficients are calculated from equation 1 at different ratios,
and normalized to their respective maximum values in pure argon
arc.
However, for the argon–helium arc plasma, a value of the nor-
malized emission coefficient of either the Ar I 794.8 nm line or the
Ar II 487.98 nm line corresponds to an infinite number of mole
fraction-temperature pairs. Hence, each value of the normalized
emission coefficient εArI for the Ar I 794.8 nm line corresponds to
a curve Y(T, εArI ), where Y is the mole fraction of argon; likewise,
each value of εArII for the Ar II 487.98 nm line corresponds to a curve
Y(T, εArII ). These dependencies are shown in Fig. 4, which shows Y,
plotted against T for different values of εArI and εArII . Inspection of
Fig. 4 shows that if both εArI and εArII are known, the number of
corresponding mole fraction-temperature pairs is, at most, one.
Measurement of temperature and mole fraction of gas com-
position distributions in the argon–helium plasma thus requires
both εArI and εArII to be measured in the plasma. These “raw” val-
ues have to be normalized to their respective maximum values in
pure argon arc. Since the normal temperature of He I 587.556 nm
spectrum is too high (24,300 K) for pure helium arc plasma to
reach, the maximum value of εHeI could not be measured. The nor-
mal temperature of Ar II is 26,400 K, the maximum value of εArII
could not be measured, either. However, in pure argon arc plasma,
that value could be calculated through Olsen-Richter diagram
 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776
Fig. 3. Dependence on temperature of the emission coefficient of (a) the 794.8 nm
Ar I line and (b) the 487.98 nm Ar II line, normalized to its maximum value in pure
argon, for different mixtures of argon and helium.
(Pokrzywka et al., 1996). As a result, it is reasonable and ratio-
nal to choose Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II 487.98 nm spectral lines
to measure temperature and gas composition distribution in the
argon–helium arc plasma. Since these spectra are only relevant to
argon, they could be used in arc plasma which contains argon, such
as argon–nitrogen and argon–hydrogen.
4. Results and discussion
Fig. 5a and b shows arc images of Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II
487.98 nm in pure argon, exposure time are different for Ar I and
Ar II, due to they are in different intensity, and the peak transmis-
sion of narrow bandpass filters are distinct from each other. In this
experiment, the frame rate of Ar I 794.8 nm is 997 Hz (correspond-
ing to exposure time of 0.18 ms), while Ar II 487.98 nm is 800 Hz
(corresponding to exposure time of 0.22 ms).
By measuring the relative intensities of Ar I and Ar II line in pure
argon arc plasma, relative emission coefficient is obtained through
Abel inversion. ε∗nm is the measured relative emission coefficient
Fig. 5. Arc images of (a) ArI 794.8 nm in pure argon, (b) ArII 487.98 nm in pure argon, (c) Ar I 794.8 nm with input gas 50%Ar + 50%He, (d) Ar II 487.98 nm with input gas
50%Ar + 50%He in a 200-A free-burning arc.
2773
Fig. 4. Relation between the mole fraction of argon and temperature for different
normalized emission coefficients.
and k is a constant that relates to the emission coefficient and the
measured relative emission coefficient by
ε∗nm = kεnm (2)
when the relative emission coefficient is normalized to its maxi-
mum relative emission coefficient
ε∗nm kεnm εnm
∗ = = (3)
εnm(max) kεnm(max) εnm(max)
it is equal to the normalized emission coefficient which mentioned
in Section 3.
In this experimental system, the norm relative emission coeffi-
cient of 794.8 nm line correspond to the highest observed value
of the off-axis maximum in pure argon arc plasma in the LTE
state at atmospheric pressure. To determine the maximum rela-
tive emission coefficient value of Ar II 487.98 nm, the measured
radial distributions of emission coefficients for the 794.8 nm and
487.98 nm lines are marked as points in the Olsen–Richter diagram
Pokrzywka et al. (1996). These emission coefficients are below the
cathode tip 2 mm in 100%Ar which are in LTE state Olsen (1959).
To superpose the experimental values on the theoretical graph,
two constants are needed. In our case, the norm relative emission
coefficient of 794.8 nm line is acquired above. Taking into account
remarks concerning the Boltzmann–Saha equilibrium for Ar II lev-
els, the norm relative emission coefficient of 487.98 Ar II line could
be determined through Olsen–Richter diagram. The results of these
procedures are shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the experimental
data for ArII and ArI lines can be well superposed on the curve.
Fig. 5c and d shows arc images of Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II
487.98 nm in 50% argon and 50% helium mixture. The relative
intensities are obtained through these arc images, and converted
to relative emission coefficients through Abel inversion. Since
the maximum relative emission coefficients of Ar I 794.8 nm and
2774 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776
Fig. 6. Pair of Olsen–Richter diagram for 100%Ar arc plasma at 2 mm below the
cathode tip. (– – –) LTE isobars at atmospheric pressure, (•) temperature marks with
1000 K increments. ()Experimental points.
Ar II 487.98 nm in pure argon are calculated previously, the relative
emission coefficients are normalized to their respective maximum
value in pure argon. In theory, the emission coefficient of Ar II
487.98 nm should almost be constant when the arc temperature
is below 15,000 K, the emission coefficient could not be measured
at temperature below 15,000 K. According to the arc temperature
profile of Murphy and Hiraoka (2000), there exists area of the
arc plasma where the temperature is below 15,000 K. As a result,
temperature and mole fraction of gas composition could only be
measured in the center of arc.
Fig. 7a and b shows the radial dependence of intensity and nor-
malized emission coefficients at a position 1 mm below the cathode
in an argon–helium arc, solid line represents Ar I spectral line, and
dotted line represents Ar II spectral line. Using the data depicted
in Fig. 4, these normalized emission coefficients are transformed
to temperature-mole fraction pairs. Fig. 8a and b shows radial
Fig. 7. Radial dependence of (a) intensity, (b) normalized emission coefficients εArI
for the 794.8 nm Ar I line and εArII for the 487.98 nm Ar II line, measured 1 mm below
the cathode in a 200-A free-burning arc with input gas 50%Ar + 50%He.
profiles of the temperature and mole fraction of gas composition
at a position 1 mm below the cathode tip. At T < 15,000 K, since the
emission coefficient changes little for the Ar II line, no values are
obtained.
Fig. 8a and b also shows the radial dependence of the tempera-
ture and mole fraction of argon at positions 1.5 mm and 2 mm below
the cathode in 50% argon and 50% helium arc plasma. The result of
composition distribution demonstrates that helium concentrates
in the center of arc plasma, composition of helium in the center of
arc plasma is higher than that in the mixture before welding, and
helium concentration decreases as the point moves away from the
axis along radial direction and increases as the point gets closer to
the cathode.
The main restriction of the modified Fowler–Milne method
which uses Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II 487.98 nm spectral lines, is
that only the temperature and mole fraction of gas composition
in the center of arc plasma could be measured. This is because
intersections of εArI and εArII are in high temperature area, and the
relative emission coefficient of Ar II is too small for the periph-
ery.
Another method, two-line relative intensity method is used to
measure temperature and mole fraction of gas composition distri-
bution in the same situation. The spectrometer scans the arc plasma
point by point, using Ar I 696.5 nm and Ar II 480.6 nm spectral lines
in this system. The relative intensity distribution at 1 mm below
tungsten (cathode) is got through spectrometer. Then the same
method as described in the previous paragraph is used to convert
the relative intensity to the relative emission coefficient. Accord-
ing to two-line relative intensity method, temperature and mole
fraction of gas composition distribution could be obtained. Compar-
ison between the calculated data from the Fowler–Milne method
and data from two-line relative intensity method, in Fig. 9, show
good agreement. That means, the developed technique measures
arc temperature and gas composition as accurate as the conven-
tional spectroscopic methods.
Fig. 8. Radial dependence of (a) temperature and (b) mole fraction of argon in
different position in a 200-A free-burning arc with input gas 50%Ar + 50%He.
 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776 2775

Fig. 9. Radial dependence of (a) temperature, (b) mole fraction distribution with
different methods of 1 mm below the cathode tip in a 200-A free-burning arc with
input gas 50%Ar + 50%He. Fig. 10. (a) Temperature and (b) mole fraction of argon distribution during arc igni-
tion at 1 mm below the cathode tip in a 200-A free-burning arc with input gas
50%Ar + 50%He.
Since the primary advantage of monochromatic image method
is to analyzing dynamic arc process, temperature and argon mole
fraction during arc ignition are calculated. As shown in Fig. 10, it
indicate that temperature have a little fluctuation after arc igni-
tion, the mole fraction of argon have a similar phenomenon, this is
caused by arc start instability.
In order to verify LTE in Ar–He arc plasma 1 mm below the
cathode tip, electron density is also calculated by Stark broadening
method which is irrelevant to LTE, using Ar II 480.6 nm spectrum
(Pan et al., 2012). The result is shown in Fig. 11. To achieve LTE
generally requires high enough density for collisional transitions
to dominate radiative transitions between all states; otherwise, the
absence of thermal radiation will cause deviations from the thermal
equilibrium. The criterion given by Hutchinson (2005) is adopted
and applied for the present computations.
Fig. 11. Electron density distribution of 1 mm below the cathode tip in a 200-A
 T 1/2  E 3 free-burning arc with input gas 50%Ar + 50%He.

ne  1019 m−3
e e
5. Conclusions
where T/e and E/e are the temperature and energy level difference
The monochromatic images of Ar I 794.8 nm and Ar II 487.98 nm
in eV. The corresponding electron population is shown in Table 2.
in arc plasma were obtained using a high speed camera. The mod-
The electron density is higher than the limited value in the mixture
ified Fowler–Milne method was applied to the measurement of
of argon and helium when not considering demixing. Hence, the
temperature and composition in the center of argon–helium arc
arc plasma is verified in LTE under this situation.
plasma in GTAW. The following conclusions were drawn:

• The modified Fowler–Milne method with high speed camera

Table 2
Electron population of argon and helium. could be used in both static and dynamic process.
• The maximum relative emission coefficient of Ar II 487.98 nm in
Element ne
argon–helium arc plasma was calculated based on Olsen-Richter
10,000 K 15,000 K 20,000 K diagram.
Ar 1.43 × 1022 1.72 × 1022 2.0 × 1022 • The helium concentrated in the center of arc plasma. Composition
50%Ar + 50%He 4.3 × 1022 5.32 × 1022 6.0 × 1022 of helium in the center of arc plasma was higher than that in
He 7.24 × 1022 8.87 × 1022 10 × 1022 mixture before welding.
2776 X. Xiao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 214 (2014) 2770–2776
Acknowledgement
The author acknowledge support from the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China, grant number is 51275299. The author
also acknowledge the advice and suggestion from Hui-ping Wang
in GM.
References
Ding, P., Pan, S., 1987. Error estimation and conversion coefficient of Bockasten
method for Abel conversion in arc plasma spectra. J. Jilin Univ. (Sci.) 2, 010.
Hiraoka, K., 1993. Evaluation of local plasma composition and temperature in mixed
gas tungsten plasma column by light spectroscopy. Q. J. Jpn. Weld. Soc. 11, 68.
Hiraoka, K., 1998. Plasma structures of Ar–H2 mixed gas tungsten arcs determined
by spectroscopic measurements. Weld. Int. 12, 186–194.
Hiraoka, K., Shiwaku, T., Ohji, T., 1997. Determining temperature distributions of gas
tungsten arc (TIG) plasma by spectroscopic methods. Weld. Int. 11, 688–696.
Hutchinson, I.H., 2005. Principles of Plasma Diagnostics. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Lancaster, J.F., 1984. The physics of welding. Phys. Technol. 15, 73.
Li, H., Li, J., Li, Y., 1993. High thermal characterictic of argon–nitrogen TIG arc. Weld.
J. 14, 125–130.
Lowke, J.J., Morrow, R., Haidar, J., Murphy, A.B., 1997. Prediction of gas tungsten arc
welding properties in mixtures of argon and hydrogen. IEEE Trans. Plas. Sci. 25,
925–930.
Ma, S., Gao, H., Wu, L., 2011a. Time resolved characterization of a free-burning argon
arc after ignition by optical emission spectroscopy. J. Appl. Phys. 110, 026102.
Ma, S., Gao, H., Wu, L., Zheng, S., 2008. Time and spatially resolved spectroscopic
measurement of temperatures in a free-burning arc by monochromatic imaging.
Meas. Sci. Technol. 19, 105602.
Ma, S., Gao, H., Zheng, S., Wu, L., 2011b. Spectroscopic measurement of temperatures
in pulsed TIG welding arcs. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 44, 405202.
Murphy, A., 1994a. Demixing due to frictional forces in an electric arc. Phys. Rev.
Lett. 73, 1797–1800.
Murphy, A., 1997. Demixing in free-burning arcs. Phys. Rev. E 55, 7473.
Murphy, A., Hiraoka, K., 2000. A comparison of measurements and calculations of
demixing in free-burning arcs. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 33, 2183.
Murphy, A.B., 1994b. Modified Fowler–Milne method for the spectroscopic mea-
surement of temperature and composition of multielement thermal plasmas.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 65, 3423.
Murphy, A.B., Tanaka, M., Tashiro, S., Sato, T., Lowke, J.J., 2009. A computational inves-
tigation of the effectiveness of different shielding gas mixtures for arc welding.
J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42, 115205.
Olsen, H.N., 1959. Thermal and electrical properties of an argon plasma. Phys. Fluids
2, 614.
Pan, C., Hua, X., Zhang, W., Li, F., Xiao, X., 2012. Calculating the Stark broadening of
welding arc spectra by Fourier transform method. Spectrosc. Spectr. Anal. 32,
1739–1743.
Pokrzywka, B., Musiol, K., Pellerin, S., Pawelec, E., Chapelle, J., 1996. Spectroscopic
investigation of the equilibrium state in the electric arc cathode region. J. Phys.
D: Appl. Phys. 29, 2644.
Song, Y., 1990. Research on Spectroscoic Diagnosis and Application of Welding Arc
Plasma [D]. Tianjin University, Tianjin.
Wang, L., Hua, X.-m., Xiao, X., Li, F., Wu, Y.-x., 2013. Analysis of arc physical property
of pulsed tungsten inert gas welding based on Fowler–Milne method. J. Shanghai
Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.) 18, 343–347.