This study was undertake to provide fundamental and basic metallurgical information on the behavior of the heat affected zone(HAZ) in Cr-Mo steel welds as well as practical information on their relative weldability.
The test methods were varied to ...
This study was undertake to provide fundamental and basic metallurgical information on the behavior of the heat affected zone(HAZ) in Cr-Mo steel welds as well as practical information on their relative weldability.
The test methods were varied to investigate the effect of post weld heat treatment (PWHT), metallurgical structure and restraint (externally applied) on the weld cracking susceptibility.
This study is used to C-ring test method. The C-ring test, normally employed for evaluating susceptibility to stress-corrosion cracking, was determine to be a suitable and small scale test to evaluate PWHT cracking susceptibility. This test incorporates all aspects of the ideal test outlined by Baker.
It is possible to incorporate an actual weld, to introduce a notch into the coarse grained HAZ, to load the coarse grained HAZ to any level of stress and, most importantly, since the c-ring is an approximately constant strain type test, the stress decreases with time at temperature in a manner similar to that of an actual weldment.
Four test conditions were employed for C-ring testing, utilizing two PWHT temperatures, 620℃ and 680℃, and three stress levels, 690MPa, 550MPa, and 410MPa. The 690MPa stress was used at both PWHT temperatures in order to determine the effect of temperature on cracking.
The samples generated during testing provided test data as well as metallographic specimens for examination by optical and electron optic techniques (SEM). Evaluation of the metallographic specimens defined the effect of microstructure on the weld cracking susceptibility.