Gleeble 540: Welding Simulator

Gleeble 540 System with test chamber and control console

Gleeble Specimen being heated in copper jaws with steep thermal gradient

Built on over 60 years of experience designing and manufacturing welding simulators, the Gleeble Welding Simulator provides a complete platform for a wide range of welding simulations and testing capabilities including weld HAZ simulation, hot tensile testing, nil-strength determination and much more.

This new system is tailored to provide a compact, low cost solution while retaining world-class capabilities that have made Gleeble systems the industry standard.

The new Gleeble Welding Simulator has been designed from the ground up with the needs of welding researchers in mind. The capabilities of this system are customized to meet those needs.

Material Testing Simulations:

Weld HAZ Simulation
Nil Strength Testing
Charpy Specimen Heat Treatment
Hot Ductility and Tensile Testing
Melting and Solidification
Study of Local Brittle Zones
Embrittlement and Crack susceptibility
Strain Induced Crack Opening (SICO)
Post-Weld Heat Treating

Process Simulations:

GMAW - Gas Metal Arc Welding
GTAW - Gas Tungsten Arc Welding
SAW - Submerged Arc Welding
ESW - Electroslag Welding
Welding of Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Materials
Diffusion Bonding
Laser Welding
Upset Welding
Post Weld Heat Treatment
Stress Relieving
Aging Characterization
Annealing

HAZ Simulation:

One of the most popular types of welding research conducted on the Gleeble is HAZ Simulation. The Gleeble recreates specific sections of the HAZ based on the programmed thermal and mechanical cycle. The microstructural gradients and residual stresses created by the rapid heating and cooling found in welding can be reproduced in a controlled laboratory setting. The Gleeble can be used to create large enough sections of HAZ material for subsequent mechanical properties testing.

Vacuum Tank Closeup:

Gleeble 540 vacuum tank with specimen in grips and descriptions of various components The vacuum tank of the Gleeble 540: Welding Simulator contains a water-cooled jaw carrier
which delivers electric current to copper grips, enabling very fast heating and cooling of specimens.

Mechanical Specifications:

The Gleeble 540 Welding Simulator offers a high speed mechanical system with unmatched performance in its class. The innovative hydraulic system results in a servo system capable of 200 millimeters per second stroke rate with precise control and measurement accuracy.

Mechanical System	Horizontal frame, closed-loop hydraulic control
Maximum Dynamic Force	30 kN (~3000kgf, ~3 Tons)
Maximum Stroke Rate	200 mm/second in tension or compression (with no load)
Minimum Stroke Rate	0.01 mm/second in tension or compression

Thermal Specifications:

The Gleeble 540 offers a high speed thermal system with heating rates up to 10,000°C/second. The ability to reproduce a wide variety of thermal profiles and gradients that materials undergo in actual processes is critical to the success of physical simulation. The Gleeble 540 accomplishes this by offering both high heating rates and high cooling rates with a variety of specimen types and materials.

Heating System	Direct resistance with closed-loop control
Temperature Controller	Digital closed-loop control using 18 bit analog-to-digital converter and 32 bit control processor Controller response rate: 10,000°C/second Resolution: One degree (C or F) Up to 8 Thermocouple channels (2 channels supplied standard)
Temperature Measurement	A variety of thermocouple types are available depending on the material being tested and the desired temperature range. Thermocouple types include: Type K Type S Type R Type B Type E Type J
Temperature Range	Room Temperature to 1700°C (Based on choice of thermocouples)
Maximum Heating Rate	Heating rates up to 10,000°C/second (6 mm diameter specimen) Heating rates are dependent on sample size and material conductivity
Controlled Cooling Rates	Controlled cooling rates of up to 200°C/second from 800°C to 500°C for a 10 mm plain carbon steel bar with 10 mm free span reduced to 6 mm diameter for 6 mm long at midspan
Maximum Quench Rates	More than 10,000°C/second at 550°C at the specimen surface for 1 mm thick x 10 mm wide sheet of plain carbon steel with 25 mm free span

More Information:

For more information about how Gleeble Systems can help you and your team solve material and processing challenges, please contact a member of our team at info@gleeble.com or +1 (518) 283-5350. In the meantime, please download a copy of our electronic brochure by clicking here.

2024 European User Meeting - April 29-30, Illertissen, Germany

Connect with Gleeble experts, fellow users, and explore the latest advancements in materials testing technology at DSI Europe GTEC Center - Illertissen, Germany . Register here.

Ceramics Expo - April 30- May 1, Michigan, USA

The DSI team will be attending the 2024 Ceramics Expo in Novi, Michigan, USA. Please come by to discuss how the Gleeble can support your research. Register here

Dr. Leijun Li

Utah State University

"On the Gleeble we can not only control all the mechanical properties, but we’re in command of the thermal properties and the atmosphere. With the Gleeble, we can do complicated applications, watch what is happening, see the effect of temperature, and know how much energy is going in. It would take a lot more time and money to do it with equipment other than the Gleeble."

Dr. David Matlock

Colorado School of Mines

"Flexibility is the key to our extensive use of the Gleeble. It helps us to get maximum productivity out of the work we do."

Dr. Hans Peter Schmitz

ThyssenKrupp Stahl

“ In our labs, we do physical simulation… We try to reproduce as precisely as possible what is going on in the actual production lines. If you do it very carefully, you can transfer the result into the production lines, and you can use the results for building up numerical models."

Dr. John Bowker

Former Senior Research Scientist CANMET Materials Technology Laboratory (CANMET-MTL)

"The Gleeble is one of the most heavily used machines at our lab... We have used and continue to use it for a broad range of thermo-mechanical simulation procedures. These include: welding applied to shipbuilding, marine materials, offshore structures and pipelines; compression testing to characterize the flow stress behavior of steels and aluminum alloys: and in situ melting and solidification to understand the effects of residuals on hot ductility."

Dr. Arnold Marder

Energy Research Center, Lehigh University

“What we are aiming at is intelligent processing. That’s where the Gleeble gives us a tremendous advantage. By allowing us to carefully simulate and model thermal and mechanical processes”

Dr. Warren Poole

University of British Columbia

"We had to generate all the parameters and then to validate the predictions that the computer model made… The Gleeble played a central role in that project. We did austenite grain growth studies, double-hit compression tests to study recrystallization, and continuous cooling transformations, with and without compression."

Dr. Brian Damkroger

Los Alamos National Laboratory

"Only the Gleeble is fast enough to allow us to physically simulate the thermal profile of electron beam welding”

Dr. Luis A. Colembergue Klujszo

Gerdau Aços Especiais Piratini

"Through the capability of simulating large scale, expensive processes in a small scale, laboratory environment, the Gleeble has made it easier for Gerdau to improve products and processes. Furthermore, all the controls available in the equipment bring a whole lot of reliability to the results, making the conclusions very sound."

Dr. Hirowo Suzuki

Nippon Steel (retired)

“In my opinion, Dynamic Systems is the top company in this kind of test equipment… worldwide.”

Tom Schambron

Bluescope Steel

"…world research and innovation are cornerstones of our business - the Gleeble is key to meeting the objectives of BlueScope. It assists in product development and improvement—such as trialling new steel grades, processing parameters, and so forth—and in tracking and solving of quality issues."

Damien Fabrègue

The Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (National Institute of Applied Science) de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

"...this is the only piece of equipment that I can do everything with. I can always do what I want. It may take some time to optimize the work, but in the end, you can always run the experiment or do the simulation that you wanted to do."

Chihiro Kasamatsu

Material Evaluation Department Aichi Steel Corporation

“…we are concentrating on testing with the Gleeble to reduce costs in our forging production processes…”

Dr. Mahesh Chaturvedi, Ph.D., FASM

University of Manitoba, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

“We want to understand what the fundamental causes for thermo-mechanical fatigue are, so we use the Gleeble to apply load and temperature, sometimes in sync and sometimes out of sync. The Gleeble can keep going for days, executing the same program again and again... it gives us excellent reproducibility.”