scholarly journals Improving Fatigue Performance of Alumino-Thermic Rail Welds

2010 ◽  
Vol 24-25 ◽  
pp. 305-310
Author(s):  
M. Jezzini-Aouad ◽  
Patrick Flahaut ◽  
Saïd Hariri ◽  
D. Zakrzewski ◽  
L. Winiar

Rail transport development offers economic and ecological interests. Nevertheless, it requires heavy investments in rolling material and infrastructure. To be competitive, this transportation means must rely on safe and reliable infrastructure, which requires optimization of all implemented techniques and structure. Rail thermite (or alumino-thermic) welding is widely used within the railway industry for in-track welding during re-rail and defect replacement. The process provides numerous advantages against other welding technology commonly used. Obviously, future demands on train traffic are heavier axle loads, higher train speeds and increased traffic density. Thus, a new enhanced weld should be developed to prevent accidents due to fracture of welds and to lower maintenance costs. In order to improve such assembly process, a detailed metallurgical study coupled to a thermomechanical modeling of the phenomena involved in the rail thermite welding process is carried out. Obtained data enables us to develop a new improved alumino-thermic weld (type A). This joint is made by modifying the routinely specified procedure (type B) used in a railway rail by a standard gap alumino-thermic weld. Joints of type A and B are tested and compared. Based on experimental temperature measurements, a finite element analysis is used to calculate the thermal residual stresses induced. Besides, experimental investigation was carried out in order to validate the numerical model. Hence, X-Ray diffraction has been used to map the residual stress field that is generated in welded rail of types A and B. In the vicinity of the weld, the residual stress patterns depend on the thermal conditions during welding. Their effect on fatigue crack growth in rail welds is studied. In the web region, both longitudinal and vertical components of residual stresses are tensile, which increases the susceptibility of that region to crack initiation and propagation from internal material defects. Indeed, weld fracture in track initiates at the web fillet. Thus, to be closer to real issue, fatigue tests specimens has been defined within the split-web area. Fatigue tests was performed on the defined specimens, welded by conventional and improved processes and obtained results adjudicates on the new advances.

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (7) ◽  
pp. 1195-1212
Author(s):  
B. Lennart Josefson ◽  
R. Bisschop ◽  
M. Messaadi ◽  
J. Hantusch

Abstract The aluminothermic welding (ATW) process is the most commonly used welding process for welding rails (track) in the field. The large amount of weld metal added in the ATW process may result in a wide uneven surface zone on the rail head, which may, in rare cases, lead to irregularities in wear and plastic deformation due to high dynamic wheel-rail forces as wheels pass. The present paper studies the introduction of additional forging to the ATW process, intended to reduce the width of the zone affected by the heat input, while not creating a more detrimental residual stress field. Simulations using a novel thermo-mechanical FE model of the ATW process show that addition of a forging pressure leads to a somewhat smaller width of the zone affected by heat. This is also found in a metallurgical examination, showing that this zone (weld metal and heat-affected zone) is fully pearlitic. Only marginal differences are found in the residual stress field when additional forging is applied. In both cases, large tensile residual stresses are found in the rail web at the weld. Additional forging may increase the risk of hot cracking due to an increase in plastic strains within the welded area.


Author(s):  
Shivdayal Patel ◽  
B. P. Patel ◽  
Suhail Ahmad

Welding is one of the most used joining methods in the ship industry. However, residual stresses are induced in the welded joints due to the rapid heating and cooling leading to inhomogenously distributed dimensional changes and non-uniform plastic and thermal strains. A number of factors, such as welding speed, boundary conditions, weld geometry, weld thickness, welding current/voltage, number of weld passes, pre-/post-heating etc, influence the residual stress distribution. The main aim of this work is to estimate the residual stresses in welded joints through finite element analysis and to investigate the effects of boundary conditions, welding speed and plate thickness on through the thickness/surface distributions of residual stresses. The welding process is simulated using 3D Finite element model in ABAQUS FE software in two steps: 1. Transient thermal analysis and 2. Quasi-static thermo-elasto-plastic analysis. The normal residual stresses along and across the weld in the weld tow region are found to be significant with nonlinear distribution. The residual stresses increase with the increase in the thickness of the plates being welded. The nature of the normal residual stress along the weld is found to be tensile-compressive-tensile and the nature of normal residual stress across the weld is found to be tensile along the thickness direction.


Author(s):  
Noel P. O’Dowd ◽  
Yuebao Lei

Tensile residual stresses, such as those generated by welding, act as crack opening stresses and can have a negative effect on the fatigue and fracture performance of a component. In this work the effect of representative residual stress distributions on the fracture behaviour of a ferritic steel has been examined using finite element analysis. A Gurson-type void growth model is used to model the effect of ductile tearing ahead of a crack. For the cases examined it is seen that a tensile residual stress field may lead to a reduction in the toughness of the material (as represented by the J-resistance curve). The observed difference in toughness can be linked to the different constraint levels in the specimens due to the introduction of the residual stress field and can be rationalised through the use of a two parameter, J–Q approach.


Author(s):  
Nazrul Islam ◽  
Tasnim Hassan

Earlier studies [1] showed that the ANSYS software package customized with an advanced rate-independent constitutive model was unable to simulate some of the low-cycle fatigue responses of elbow components. Hence, simulations are performed to investigate the influence of manufacturing and welding residual stresses on elbow low-cycle fatigue responses. The sequentially coupled thermo-mechanical finite element analysis is performed to determine the initial residual stress states in elbows due to the elbow manufacturing processes and welding of elbows to straight pipes. Real-time girth-welding processes are taken into account to simulate the welding induced residual stress field. Incorporating these initial residual stresses in the computations, low-cycle fatigue and strain ratcheting responses are simulated by ANSYS. The simulation responses demonstrate that the influence of manufacturing and welding residual stresses in elbows on its low-cycle fatigue responses is negligible. Hence, the question remains what is missing in the simulation models that some of the elbow low-cycle fatigue responses cannot be simulated.


Author(s):  
Lionel Depradeux ◽  
Frédérique Rossillon

In order to obtain the residual stress field resulting from the welding process, numerical simulations of multi-pass welding have demonstrated their efficiency and have become an interesting alternative to practical measurements. However, in the context of engineering studies, it remains a difficult task to compute residual stresses for a very high number of passes with reasonable computation times. In this paper, a time-saving method is proposed to simulate the welding process, ensuring an accurate reproduction of the residual stress field with drastically reduced computation times. The method consists in including in the simulation only the last deposited pass, or a reduced number of appropriately selected passes. For a given material and a given heat input, the choice of remaining passes depends on the geometrical parameters. The method is applied to various geometries of austenitic pipes girth welds, which have been widely studied in the literature and standards. The results, confronted to multipass simulations including all the passes, and to literature results, are very satisfactory. Quasi-identical residual stress fields are computed in both cases with computation times divided by a factor comprised between 7 up to 12. Further computations are in progress on other configurations than girth-weld pipes, and more complex 3D geometry like J weld of bottom head nozzles.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dezheng Liu ◽  
Yan Li ◽  
Haisheng Liu ◽  
Zhongren Wang ◽  
Yu Wang

Weld solidification crack prevention in the laser penetration welding process is essential for the strength of the welded component. The formation of solidification cracks can ultimately be attributed to welding residual stresses, and preventive measures should be taken during welding. In this study, the effects of residual stresses on the laser penetration welding quality of ultrafine-grained steels were investigated. A heat source model was established through the analysis of the metallography of the cross section of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of ultrafine-grained AN420s-grade steel, and the chemical composition of the weld bead was obtained using an FLS980-stm Edinburgh fluorescence spectrometer. Furthermore, the constitutive coupling relation between the temperature and material flow stress was established based on the Gibbs function, and the welding residual stress was obtained by setting trace points in a finite element analysis (FEA) model based on experimental data of the weld bead cross section under different welding conditions. The results show that weld solidification cracks will form when the residual stresses exceed the material flow stresses in the weld bead, and the residual stresses can be decreased through a reasonable increase of the welding speed. The results indicate that the proposed criterion has high accuracy and can be used to predict the formation of weld solidification cracks in the laser penetration welding process.


Author(s):  
Medhat Awad El-Hadek ◽  
Mohammad S. Davoud

Inertia friction welding processes often generate substantial residual stresses due to the heterogeneous temperature distribution during the welding process. The residual stresses which are the results of incompatible elastic and plastic deformations in weldment will alter the performance of welded structures. In this study, three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis has been performed to analyze the coupled thermo-mechanical problem of inertia friction welding of a hollow cylinder. The analyses include the effect of conduction and convection heat transfer in conjunction with the angular velocity and the thrust pressure. The results include joint deformation and a full-field view of the residual stress field and the transient temperature distribution field in the weldment. The shape of deformation matches the experimental results reported in the literature. The residual stresses in the heat-affected zone have a high magnitude but comparatively are smaller than the yield strength of the material.


2009 ◽  
Vol 83-86 ◽  
pp. 738-745
Author(s):  
G.H. Farrahi ◽  
G.H. Majzoobi ◽  
A. Fadaee

In the present work, specimens were cut out from St-37 plates with 19 mm thickness. The thickness of plates was reduced to 12.5 mm by milling and grinding operations. Then a standard V-shaped fillet was made on one edge of the plates. Two plates were butt-welded by standard metal arc gas (MAG) welding process. Residual stresses induced by welding were measured on 20 specimens by centre hole drilling. Load controlled axial fatigue tests were carried out to determine the fatigue life of specimens. Crack growth rates were obtained from experiment. Fractography of specimens was performed. Genetic Algorithm (GA) was employed for prediction of residual stress value in weldments using the crack growth rates obtained from experiments. The results show that, by using the measured crack growth rates and GA model, residual stresses can be estimated with a good approximation.


Author(s):  
H. P. Jawale ◽  
Rahul Singh

Welded joint is most commonly used for building structures and machine components. Welding process involves heating followed by uneven cooling causing residual stress field. In conjunction with stresses due to external loads, in-service behaviour is affected due to residual stress in welded components. It induces defects, also alters crack initiation life, fatigue behaviour, breaking strength, corrosion resistance and increases the susceptibility of structure to failure by fracture. The residual stress is function of cooling rate and the size of weld. The role of residual stress associated with welding is therefore very important while designing mechanical parts. Conventional methods like heat treatment and shot-peening techniques becomes difficult to be applied for reduction of residual stress in general purpose applications. The work presented in this paper describes the measurement of residual stress using stress relieving method, based on hole-drilling technique. Subsequently, residual stresses are relived and measured using strain rosette near the weld zone. These strains value is converted in to stress value. Residual stress is quantified with respect to yield strength, making it possible to be considered for safe designing of weld components.


2006 ◽  
Vol 524-525 ◽  
pp. 671-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kartal ◽  
Mark Turski ◽  
Greg Johnson ◽  
Michael E. Fitzpatrick ◽  
S. Gungor ◽  
...  

This paper describes the measurement of longitudinal residual stresses within specially designed 200x180x25mm groove weld specimens. The purpose of these measurements was to compare the residual stress field arising from single and multi-pass weld beads laid down within the constraint of a groove in order to validate finite element simulations of the welding process. Measurements were made over the cross section at the mid-bead length, utilising the relatively new Contour method and neutron diffraction. Results from these measurements indicate a larger peak tensile longitudinal residual stresses within the weld region of the multi-pass weld sample. Good agreement is found between both techniques.


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