This article deals with an analysis of mixing and determines the admixing rate of a base S355 steel plate in single-bead surface welds by measuring the chemical composition using a plane-scan energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) on metallographic cross-sections. The results show that obtaining a larger number of EDXS measurements does not necessarily lead to obtaining a more accurate admixing rate. Due to the ever-present segregations that are generally near the base material, the disadvantage of this method is the subjective influence of the SEM operator on the estimated admixing rate. To obtain relevant results, a sufficiently wide area of well-mixed melt, including segregations, must be analyzed. This study showed that by using a sufficiently large number of appropriately selected sites with a sufficiently large surface area, it is possible to estimate the admixing rate from the chemical composition with an accuracy of ≥96% for the geometrically determined admixing rate D = 30%. From several equations, the best result showed an equation which is the arithmetic mean of the two different arithmetic means and in which the artificial influencing factor of the segregations of the base material is taken into account. With this equation, the same value of admixing rate, D = 30%, was obtained using the comparative geometric method.
Keywords: EDXS analysis; admixing rate; covered electrodes; segregation; single-bead surface weld.