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Effect of heat input on microstructure and mechanical properties in underwater wet flux-cored arc welding of structural steels

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Abstract

In recent years, the researches have been leaning towards the use of the wet welding process using the self-shielded flux-cored arc welding (FCAW-S) due to its higher productivity. Processing parameters such as welding current (I), arc voltage (E) and welding speed (v) notably determine the final microstructure and resulting mechanical properties of underwater wet welds. In this research work, the effect of the heat input generated by experimental underwater wet welding using the FCAW-S process on the microstructure and microhardness of weld beads made on ASTM A36 steel plates is investigated. For this purpose, experimental underwater welding tests were carried out in a special tank containing 30 cm of water column using three levels of heat input (578, 694 and 1074 J/mm) and a commercial filler metal (AWS E71T-GS). The microstructure and mechanical properties of the weld beads obtained were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Vickers hardness tests, respectively. In general, the experimental results show that the microstructure in both heat-affected zone (HAZ) and fusion zone (FZ) is basically constituted by martensite (M) for the three energy levels studied, which is related to the high cooling rates involved in the underwater welding processes. In addition, the mechanical properties reveal that the hardness values decrease with the increase in heat input due that increasing the ratio decreases the cooling rate and the martensite resulting is less hard. Finally, it is concluded that it is necessary to change the filler metal or looking for better parameters configuration to obtain higher heat input and change de microstructure in the fusion zone (FZ) to improve the mechanical properties in the welded component.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate the financial support for this research from the Tecnológico Nacional de México and Consultores Asociados en Soldadura funds and the knowledge acquired. The author P Costa thanks CONACYT for their support in the form of postdoctoral fellowship

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tecnológico Nacional de México/IT Saltillo, Blvd. V. Carranza 2400 Col. Tecnológico, 25280, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico

    Isis Fernanda de Luna, Patricia Costa, Gerardo Altamirano-Guerrero, Antonio Guía-Hernández, Rocío Ochoa-Palacios & Alexandro Buendía

  2. Consultores Asociados en Soldadura, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico

    Luis E. Ramírez-Luna

Authors
  1. Isis Fernanda de Luna
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  2. Patricia Costa
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  3. Gerardo Altamirano-Guerrero
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  4. Antonio Guía-Hernández
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  5. Rocío Ochoa-Palacios
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  6. Luis E. Ramírez-Luna
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Correspondence to Patricia Costa.

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de Luna, I.F., Costa, P., Altamirano-Guerrero, G. et al. Effect of heat input on microstructure and mechanical properties in underwater wet flux-cored arc welding of structural steels. MRS Advances 7, 1049–1053 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-022-00410-3

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