Human exposure in arc-welding processes: Current versus previous ICNIRP basic restrictions

Author

Grassi, Flavia ; Spadacini, Giordano ; Pignari, Sergio A.

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Elettotecnica, Politec. di Milano, Milan, Italy

fYear

2012

fDate

6-10 Aug. 2012

Firstpage

749

Lastpage

754

Abstract

This work deals with human exposure of workers to electromagnetic fields generated by manual arc-welding processes, and focuses on the comparison between current ICNIRP basic restrictions (2010), defined as internal electric field values, and previous ICNIRP basic restrictions (1998), still in force in the EU till the Directive 2004/40/EC will be revised, defined in terms of induced current density. To this aim, numerical simulation is used to mimic the exposure setup defined in Standard EN 50444, in the severe case of Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding involving square-wave currents. It is shown that application of the new ICNIRP Guidelines leads to a significant reduction of the exposure index.

Keywords

arc welding; occupational safety; standards; Directive 2004-40-EC; EN 50444 standard; ICNIRP Guidelines; ICNIRP basic restrictions; International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection; TIG welding; arc-welding process; exposure index; human exposure; induced current density; internal electric field value; square-wave current; tungsten inert gas welding; Current density; Electric fields; Guidelines; Numerical models; Numerical simulation; Standards; Welding;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), 2012 IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

ISSN

2158-110X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2061-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISEMC.2012.6350920

Filename

6350920