The necessity of time and maintenance costs reduction, in electric energy generation turbines promotes the development of new materials and processes to recovering cavitated areas. Nowadays different automated welding process have been studied, mainly, plasma transferred arc welding, PTA, in substitution to flux cored arc welding FCAW. PTA process presents as main advantages: low dilution, narrow heat affected zone and excellent arc stability, however, few cavitation resistant alloys are developed for this process. This work has the objective to compare three cobalt cavitation resistant alloys, deposited with PTA process. The first alloy is a cobalt stainless steel alloy developed for FCAW process, the second is a cobalt stainless steel alloy developed for PTA process and a national developed stainless steel alloy with cobalt. The samples were analyzed by optical and electronic microscopy, micro hardness and accelerated cavitation test, ASTM G32-95. The results show that a refined austenitic microstructure was observed in all samples. The commercial alloy, developed for PTA welding, presented a better arc stability and lower quantity of defects. The national alloy had shown good result during deposition, while FCAW alloy presented better cavitation resistance.
Cavitation; stainless steel; plasma welding; Cobalt
