Uma investigação sobre a prioridade da invenção do processo de soldagem a arco elétrico

Abstract

Welding as we know it today in the modern era has undergone many developments with the aim of being increasingly efficient and having lower manufacturing costs. The invention of electric arc welding was made possible by the industrial revolution that increased the development of fields such as electricity and electrical engineering. Thus, began at the beginning of the 19th century what would become one of the greatest inventions of the period of the industrial revolution: the discovery of the electric arc. Later, this discovery will pave the way for the development of technologies such as public lighting, heating and even electric arc welding. The latter was born late after the discovery of the electric arc, due to the lack of knowledge in the field of electrical engineering and especially about the energy sources to use this process. Thus, electric arc welding will begin to be developed from the discovery of electromagnetism by Faraday and the creation of the first electrical generators, making it possible to obtain current sources powerful enough to carry out the metal welding process, primarily through the electric arc welding with carbon electrode. The question of who created electric arc welding is relatively vague and confusing, and it is the focus of this paper to establish who really originated the science of electric metal welding. Thus, a brief review of the history of welding from its origins to modern times is made, before focusing more extensively on the discovery of electric arc in Russia by Vasily Petrov, then on the emergence of electric arc welding in Russia and France through the inventors Nikolay Nikolaevich Bernardos and also Auguste de Méritens, who are the two main protagonists involved in the creation of electric arc welding and who affirm the originality of their welding process. Thus, a chronological analysis of the facts is made, based on observations and reports available at the time, in order to resolve the issue of the priority of the invention of electrical welding. After determining who was really the author of the electric arc welding, a series of electric arc welding experiments are carried out with equipment similar to the one at the time, in order to confirm the feasibility of the welding process and be able to compare the results presented in the technical literature of the time. Thus, electric arc welding experiments with a carbon electrode and a coated electrode are carried out in order to compare the results.