The experiments were carried out upon the determination of simulated heat-affected zone continuous cooling transformation (SH-CCT) diagrams, the characteristics of microstructure and Vickers hardness of SH-CCT specimens, and impact toughness in simulated coarse grain heat-affected zone (CGHAZ) of ship steels under different heat input based on physical simulation. The SH-CCT diagram reveals that bainite is always obtained in a wide range of cooling rates. When the maximum cooling rate reaches 100 °C/s (t8/5=3 seconds), the maximum fraction of martensite (8%) is obtained and the microstructures mainly consist of lath bainite and the hardness is only 255 HV. This demonstrates that the steel has a low quench-hardening tendency and excellent resistance to cold cracking. There are no obvious hardening and softening phenomena in simulated CGHAZ. Test results of impact toughness under different heat input in simulated CGHAZ show that the impact energies reach over 30 J at -40 °C when t8/5 is less than 20 s, meeting the stipulated requirements of ship steel (≥22 J at -40 °C) but no great allowance. Thus, to meet the requirement of properties during welding, it is proposed to choose t8/5 ranging from 5 to 20 s, correspondently the line energies ranging from 14 to 37 KJ/cm for 30 mm thick plate.
A round-robin test with thermal simulation of the welding HAZ to draw CCT diagrams: a need for harmonized procedures and microconstituent terminologies
