Abstract
A programme of weldability testing has been carried out on CO2 laser welds in C-Mn steels using the Russell test. It was observed that solidification cracking occurred in two forms, namely Type A, restricted to the weld centreline, within the centre of plate thickness, and Type B “flare cracking”, also associated with some centreline cracking in severe cases, typically, but not exclusively, lying within the top part of the weld. A compositional index developed in previous work has been found to be successful at predicting the susceptibility of a slightly wider compositional range of steels, but it was not possible to identify the effect of carbon content below 0.09% with confidence from the present work. It is also likely that there is an effect of steel composition on weld bead shape, which may influence risk of Type A cracking. Type B cracking was only observed in steels with a UCS value (a solidification cracking parameter for submerged arc welds) of 28 or above. No apparent effect of strength per se over a range of up to ~300 MPa yield on the risk of solidification cracking in C-Mn steel laser welds was found.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by Industrial Members of TWI as part of the Core Research Programme. The authors acknowledge valuable input from colleagues, particularly Peter Hart on metallurgical issues and the late Derek Russell on process issues.
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Gittos, M.F., Birch, S., Pargeter, R. (2011). Solidification Cracking Susceptibility in C-Mn Steel CO2 Laser Welds. In: Böllinghaus, T., Lippold, J., Cross, C. (eds) Hot Cracking Phenomena in Welds III. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16864-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16864-2_13
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