scholarly journals Tracking local brittle zone in the heat affected zone of girth-welded API 5L x46 pipe

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-416
Author(s):  
M.O.H. Amuda ◽  
L. O. Osob ◽  
N.N. Etuk ◽  
T. F. Lawal ◽  
A.O. Adetayo

In this study, microhardness variation as well as macro and micro structural examination of the heat affected zone (HAZ) of a girth welded API 5L X46 pipeline material were conducted as a means of tracking local brittle zone (LBZ) in the HAZ region. The weldment analysed were built from heat input range of 695 J/mm – 2567 J/mm. Analysis of the results revealed that the HAZ profile changes with variation in the heat input and becomes shallow but wider as the heat input increases. Defects free welds were achieved under the heat input range of 1650 J/mm – 2017 J/mm welding condition. Localized high hardness values were obtained at certain locations within the HAZ of intermediate heat input welds produced at 1467 J/mm due to thermal stresses induced strains at this heat input in the resolidified weld. Other than this, non-equilibrium rapid heating/cooling that is common during welding as well as the magnitude of mechanical strain generated on cooling vary with heat input and was attributed to the development of high hardness value at localized region within the HAZ of the welds in low heat input welding condition. The macrographic profile at these locations, contrasted against that of a failed pipeline material of similar specification obtained from typical oil and gas infrastructure, established that crack initiation and propagation followed the trend of microhardness variations in the girth welded pipe. The crack initiates at specific location in the HAZ with very high hardness in the range 186-216 Hv within a radius of about 3-5 mm from the edge of the fusion zone. Keywords: API 5L X46; Girth welding; Heat input; Heat affected zone; Local brittle zones

Author(s):  
Yuta Honma ◽  
Gen Sasaki ◽  
Kunihiko Hashi ◽  
Fumiyoshi Minami

Abstract Copper-containing low alloy steel based on ASTM A707 5L grade is widely used for structural parts of offshore wells. Applications of the steel for Ultra-deepwater development require excellent low temperature toughness from the viewpoint of marine accident prevention. However it is difficult to stably obtain good weld joint toughness because the welding condition is inevitably scattering. With those backgrounds, this paper focuses on metallurgical factors controlling the HAZ toughness of A707 modified steel. Potential factors considered are the grain size, M-A and precipitates. A challenge is demonstrated to improve the HAZ toughness by optimizing the Cu and Mn contents. In this study, we investigated mechanical properties including crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) and we observed microstructure using welding tests or various weld heat cycle specimens. The weld heat affected zone (HAZ) of a conventional material had good toughness for the low heat input condition. However it was remarkably decreased for the high heat input condition due to the precipitating martensite-austenite constituent (M-A) in local brittle zones (LBZ). The weld test results indicated the importance of suppressing the formation of M-A in order to improve toughness in the HAZ of the steel. Thereby, we challenged the optimization of chemical composition for HAZ toughness improvement. Cu had no bad influence on the HAZ toughness. It was demonstrated that the HAZ toughness is recovered by good use of Cu precipitates in SC cycle. Moreover the area fraction of M-A is decreased in keeping with Mn content, which leads to the improvement of the ICCG HAZ toughness. Based on our study, the recommended amounts of Cu and Mn are more than 1.0 mass% and less than 0.6 mass%, respectively, to ensure the HAZ toughness, especially ICCG HAZ toughness.


2011 ◽  
Vol 110-116 ◽  
pp. 3191-3198
Author(s):  
Sadegh Moeinifar

The high-strength low-alloy microalloyed steel was procured as a hot rolled plate with accelerated cooling. The Gleeble thermal simulated process involved heating the steel specimens to the peak temperature of 1400 °C, with constant cooling rates of 3.75 °C/s and 2 °C/s to room temperature. The four-wire tandem submerged arc welding process, with different heat input, was used to generate a welded microstructure. The martensite/austenite constituent appeared in the microstructure of the heat affected zone region for all the specimens along the prior-austenite grain boundaries and between bainitic ferrite laths. The blocky-like and stringer martensite/austenite morphology were observed in the heat affected zone regions. The martensite/austenite constituents were obtained by a combination of field emission scanning electron microscopes and image analysis software The Charpy absorbed energy of specimens was assessed using Charpy impact testing at-50 °C. Brittle particles, such as martensite/austenite constituent along the grain boundaries, can make an easy path for crack propagation. Similar crack initiation sites and growth mechanism were investigated for specimens welded with different heat input values.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gucwa ◽  
J. Winczek ◽  
R. Bęczkowski ◽  
M. Dośpiał

Abstract The welding technologies are widely used for design of protection layer against wear and corrosion. Hardfacing, which is destined for obtaining coatings with high hardness, takes special place in these technologies. One of the most effective way of hardfacing is using self shielded flux cored arc welding (FCAW-S). Chemical composition obtained in flux cored wire is much more rich in comparison to this obtained in solid wire. The filling in flux cored wires can be enriched for example with the mixture of hard particles or phases with specified ratio, which is not possible for solid wires. This is the reason why flux cored wires give various possibilities of application of this kind of filler material for improving surface in mining industry, processing of minerals, energetic etc. In the present paper the high chromium and niobium flux cored wire was used for hardfacing process with similar heat input. The work presents studies of microstructures of obtained coatings and hardness and geometric properties of them. The structural studies were made with using optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction that allowed for identification of carbides and other phases obtained in the structures of deposited materials. Investigated samples exhibit differences in coating structures made with the same heat input 4,08 kJ/mm. There are differences in size, shape and distribution of primary and eutectic carbides in structure. These differences cause significant changes in hardness of investigated coatings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 937 ◽  
pp. 61-67
Author(s):  
Yu Jie Li ◽  
Jin Wei Lei ◽  
Xuan Wei Lei ◽  
Oleksandr Hress ◽  
Kai Ming Wu

Utilizing submerged arc welding under heat input 50 kJ/cm on 60 mm thick marine engineering structure plate F550, the effect of preheating and post welding heat treatment on the microstructure and impact toughness of coarse-grained heat-affected zone (CGHAZ) has been investigated. The original microstructure of the steel plate is tempered martensite. The yield and tensile strength is 610 and 660 MPa, respectively. The impact absorbed energy at low temperature (-60 °C) at transverse direction reaches about 230~270 J. Welding results show that the preheating at 100 °C did not have obvious influence on the microstructure and toughness; whereas the tempering at 600 °C for 2.5 h after welding could significantly reduce the amount of M-A components in the coarse-grained heat-affected zone and thus improved the low temperature impact toughness.


2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 2018-2026 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takako Yamashita ◽  
Junji Shimamura ◽  
Kenji Oi ◽  
Masayasu Nagoshi ◽  
Katsunari Oikawa ◽  
...  

1956 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-402
Author(s):  
Jerome Weiner

Abstract The thermal stresses in a free plate of elastoplastic material subjected to a varying heat input over one face are determined. A heuristic solution is first found by suitable modifications of the known elastic solution. It is then verified that the solution satisfies all the conditions of the appropriate uniqueness theorem and represents therefore the unique solution to the problem. Residual stresses are determined and found to depend markedly on the peak magnitude of the heat input.


The thickness of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) has a great influence on the strength of the welded joint, so one of the important tasks is to control the HAZ to a small enough level, through using the suitable heat-input (qd). In this study, the authors use SYSWELD software to compute and build a relationship between the heat-input and the thickness of the heat-affected zone in the plate thickness direction to find the right heat-input for researched welding joint. The simulation results show that when welding the root pass with qd > 552 J/mm and the cap pass with 754 J/mm < qd < 1066 J/mm, the thickness of HAZ were increased with a function almost linearly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Singh Pratap ◽  
Judit Kovácsb

The development of high strength aluminium alloy has revolutionized the automotive industry with innovative manufacturing and technological process to provide high-performance components, weight reduction and also diversified the application field and design consideration for the automotive parts that work under severe conditions, but the selection of proper production parameters is most challenging task to get excellent results. Growing industrial demand of aluminium alloys led to the development of new welding technologies, processes and studies of various parameters effects for its intended purposes. The microstructural changes lead to loss of hardening and thereby mechanical strength in the HAZ welded joint even though the base materials are heat treatable and precipitation hardened. So, our goal is to analyse HAZ softening and analyse the sub-zones as a function of the parameter. In this paper, the influence of weld heat cycle on the heat-affected zone (HAZ) is physically simulated for Tungsten Inert Gas Welding (TIG) using Gleeble 3500 thermomechanical simulator for three different automotive aluminium alloy (AA5754-H22, AA6082-T6 & AA7075-T6) plate of 1 mm thickness. In order to simulate the sub-zones of the heat-affected zone, samples were heated to four different HAZ peak temperatures (550 °C, 440 °C, 380 °C and 280 °C), two linear heat input (100 J/mm and 200 J/mm) by the application of Rykalin 2D model. A series of experiments were performed to understand the behaviour, which make it possible to measure the objective data on the basis of the obtained image of the aluminium alloys tested with heat-affected zone tests in a Gleeble 3500 physical simulator. The main objective is to achieve the weldability of three different automotive aluminium alloys and their comparison based on the welding parameters like heat input. Further, the investigation of HAZ softening and microstructure of the specimens were tested and analysed using Vicker's hardness test and optical microscope respectively. The paper focuses on HAZ softening analysis of different grades of aluminium alloys for automotive application.


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