Simulation of Microstructure Evolution and Its Experimental Verifications for Girth Welds in High-Strength Pipelines

Author(s):  
Yaoshan Chen ◽  
Yong-Yi Wang ◽  
James Gianetto ◽  
Vaidyanath Rajan ◽  
Marie Quintana

Girth Welding of high strength steels such as X80 or X100 poses a number of challenges because of the sensitivity of weld mechanical properties to variations in welding parameters and material properties. This dependency is further complicated by the application of alternative welding processes with multiple wires, tandem wire or dual torch welding, for example. In order to correlate the relation between weld mechanical properties and the welding conditions, an integrated thermal and microstructure model has been developed. Given the welding conditions, the thermal model is able to simulate the local thermal cycles for a girth weld with multiple passes and multiple electrode wires. In the mean time, a microstructure model, using the thermal cycles obtained from the thermal model as input, simulates the microstructure evolution both in the weld metal and the HAZ as the welding progresses. This paper presents the latest development of this microstructure model and its verification against metallurgical measurement data from X100 girth welds. These welds included girth welds made under practical welding conditions and experimental welds made with X100 plates. The measured hardness was compared to the predicted by the microstructure model. The comparison indicated that the microstructure was able to predict the hardness profiles in a multi-pass girth weld and the general trend of variation as a function of welding conditions. In order to improve the accuracy of hardness prediction, the areas of improvement in the microstructure model have been identified.

Author(s):  
Yaoshan Chen ◽  
Yong-Yi Wang ◽  
Vaidyanath Rajan ◽  
Marie Quintana

Girth welds in high-strength pipeline constructions are often made with mechanized pulsed gas-metal-arc welding (P-GMAW) process. Welding of the high strength steels poses a number of challenges because of the sensitivity of weld mechanical properties to variations in welding parameters and material properties. In addition to the unique characteristics of narrow groove weld geometry and multiple weld passes, the fabrication of P-GMAW girth welds sometimes also employs alternative welding processes such as dual torch or tandem wire in order to increase pipeline construction productivity. In order to understand the dependency of weld properties on welding processes and their parameters, a transient thermal model for multi-pass girth weld had been proposed and successfully developed. The heat transfer model used the superposition principle of heat sources to handle the welding processes with multiple wires or multiple passes. This paper presents the latest development of this numerical approach and its verification against experimental measurements of thermal cycles from X100 girth welds under different welding conditions. A number of X100 pipe girth welds under different welding conditions were made for the verification purpose. The welding conditions include single torch and dual torch P-GMAW process, 1G and 5G welding. Thermocouples were placed in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) and the weld-pool for the measurements of thermal cycles. The measured thermal cycles and cooling times from 800°C to 500°C were compared to those predicted by the thermal model. Very good agreements between the measured results and the numerical prediction by the thermal model were achieved.


2016 ◽  
Vol 879 ◽  
pp. 1760-1765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Sharma ◽  
Uwe Reisgen

The application of high strength steels in welded structures relies on easy to use quality assurance concepts for the welding process. For ferritic steels, one of the most common methods for estimating the mechanical properties of welded joints is the cooling time concept t8/5. Even without experimental determination, the calculation of cooling time with previously introduced formulas based on the welding parameters leads to good results. Because high strength structural steels and weld metals with a yield strength of 960 MPa contain higher quantities of alloying elements, the transformation start temperature Ar3 is found to be outside of the range of 800 °C to 500 °C. This leads to inadequate estimation results, as the thermal arrest caused by the microstructural transformation in this case is not considered. In this work the usage of the well-proven cooling time concept t8/5 is analyzed using high strength fine grained structural steels and suitable welding filler wires during gas metal arc and submerged arc welding processes. The results are discussed taking into account the microstructure and the transformation behavior. Based on the experimental work, an improved concept is presented.


2016 ◽  
Vol 835 ◽  
pp. 210-215
Author(s):  
Máté Nagy ◽  
Mária Behúlová

The paper deals with the friction stir welding (FSW) of the high strength EN AW 7075-T651 aluminium alloy with the aim to analyze the influence of welding parameters on the mechanical properties of Al-weld joints. FSW represents relatively novel solid-state technology of material joining which can be successfully applied for welding of several metallic alloys including the high-strength aluminium alloys that are hard to weld by conventional fusion welding processes. In cooperation with VÚZ - PI SR Bratislava, nine experimental weld joints of samples with dimensions of 300 × 150 × 10 mm were prepared using the welding machine of the FSW-LM-060 type and different parameters of welding – the welding speed from 60 to 120 mm/min and the tool rotation rate from 600 to 1000 rpm in clockwise direction. The quality of weld joints was evaluated by static tensile tests and micro-hardness measurements. According to obtained results of tensile testing, the average values of ultimate strength of weld joints are by 32.2 % lower comparing with the ultimate strength of the base material. On the other hand, the ductility increased by 7.2 %. The highest micro-hardness of weld joints at the level of 129 HV was measured in thermo-mechanically affected zone on the retreating side.


Author(s):  
Scott Funderburk ◽  
Paul Spielbauer ◽  
Yaoshan Chen ◽  
Marie Quintana

The mechanical properties of X100 pipeline girth welds are quite sensitive to welding parameters and the design range for a viable welding procedure is narrower compared to pipeline steels of lower grades. The use of a high-productivity welding process, such as dual-torch gas metal arc welding (GMAW), further compounds the dependency of weld properties on welding parameters. Consequently, for X100 pipe welding procedure development, the path to achieve the required weld performance can be a time-consuming and costly process. Developed in a recently completed project, the essential welding variable methodology provides an effective approach to optimize the development process for X100 pipe welding, with the benefits of reducing development time and saving cost. The present paper presents a practical case study of the methodology for girth welds. The present paper focuses on the information needed and the analyses performed in the application of the methodology to the process of welding procedure development for a dual-torch pulsed GMAW (GMAW-P) procedure. Using an analysis tool that can predict the thermal cycles from welding parameters and the available knowledge of microstructure and mechanical responses of both pipe materials and weld metals to welding thermal cycles (cooling rate), several candidates of dual-torch pulsed GMAW procedures were evaluated first for cooling times to help the determination of the final welding procedures. The finalized welding procedures used for the production of the qualification welds were evaluated to estimate the mechanical properties of the girth welds. The estimated weld properties will be compared to those from the test results when they become available.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5728
Author(s):  
HyeonJeong You ◽  
Minjung Kang ◽  
Sung Yi ◽  
Soongkeun Hyun ◽  
Cheolhee Kim

High-strength steels are being increasingly employed in the automotive industry, requiring efficient welding processes. This study analyzed the materials and mechanical properties of high-strength automotive steels with strengths ranging from 590 MPa to 1500 MPa, subjected to friction stir welding (FSW), which is a solid-phase welding process. The high-strength steels were hardened by a high fraction of martensite, and the welds were composed of a recrystallized zone (RZ), a partially recrystallized zone (PRZ), a tempered zone (TZ), and an unaffected base metal (BM). The RZ exhibited a higher hardness than the BM and was fully martensitic when the BM strength was 980 MPa or higher. When the BM strength was 780 MPa or higher, the PRZ and TZ softened owing to tempered martensitic formation and were the fracture locations in the tensile test, whereas BM fracture occurred in the tensile test of the 590 MPa steel weld. The joint strength, determined by the hardness and width of the softened zone, increased and then saturated with an increase in the BM strength. From the results, we can conclude that the thermal history and size of the PRZ and TZ should be controlled to enhance the joint strength of automotive steels.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1035 ◽  
pp. 404-409
Author(s):  
Zhe Rui Zhang ◽  
Ren Bo Song ◽  
Nai Peng Zhou ◽  
Wei Feng Huo

In this study, a new Fe-6Mn-4Al-0.4C high strength medium manganese hot rolled steel sheet was designed. The influence mechanism of the intercritical annealing (IA) temperature on microstructure evolution and mechanical properties of experimental steel were studied by SEM and XRD. The experimental steel was held for 30 minutes at 640°C, 680°C, 720°C, 760°C, 800°C, respectively. When the annealing temperature was 640°C, cementite particles precipitated between the austenite and ferrite phase boundary. As the annealing temperature increased, the cementite gradually dissolved and disappeared, the fraction of lamellar austenite increased significantly. When the annealing temperature is 800°C, the coarse equiaxed austenite and ferrite appeared. The yield strength (YS) decreased, the product of strength and elongation (PSE) and total elongation (TE) both increased first and then decreased, while the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) showed the opposite trend. The experimental steel exhibited excellent comprehensive mechanical properties after held at 760°C for 30 min. The UTS was 870 MPa, the YS was 703 MPa, and the TE was 77 %, the PSE was 67 GPa·%.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Laitila ◽  
Lassi Keränen ◽  
Jari Larkiola

AbstractIn this study, we present the effect of enhanced cooling on the mechanical properties of a high-strength low-alloy steel (having a yield strength of 700 MPa) following a single-pass weld process. The properties evaluated in this study include uniform elongation, impact toughness, yield, tensile and fatigue strengths alongside the cooling time of the weld. With the steel used in this study, the enhanced cooling resulted in a weld joint characterized with excellent cross-weld uniform elongation, yield and fatigue strength. The intensified cooling reduced the time it takes for the weld to reach 100 °C by around 190 s. Not only the fusion line of the weld was less pronounced, but also the grain size of the CGHAZ was greatly refined as a result of the enhanced cooling. The results indicate that combining external cooling to the welding processes can be beneficial for the studied high-strength steel.


Metals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 685
Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Jiang ◽  
Shujun Chen ◽  
Jinlong Gong ◽  
Zhenyang Lu

The present study aims to investigate the effect of microstructure and texture on mechanical properties of resistance spot welding of high strength steel 22MnB5 and 5A06 aluminium alloy as a function of welding parameters. The pseudo-nugget zones (NZs) at the steel side have undergone full recrystallisation with a fine-grained ferrite structure containing a small amount of retained austenite and a high hardness of approximately 500 HV, which is a 35% increase in hardness compared to the base material (BM) with fine lath martensitic structure. The NZs at the Al side contain both a recrystallisation texture and shear texture. Higher tensile shear strength with increasing weld time could be linked to the random texture at the Al side. The highest tensile shear strength was achieved at an intermetallic layer thickness of 4 mm.


2016 ◽  
Vol 857 ◽  
pp. 228-231
Author(s):  
Ho Sung Lee ◽  
Ye Rim Lee ◽  
Kyung Ju Min

Aluminum-Lithium alloys have been found to exhibit superior mechanical properties as compared to the conventional aerospace aluminum alloys in terms of high strength, high modulus, low density, good corrosion resistance and fracture toughness at cryogenic temperatures. Even though they do not form low-melting eutectics during fusion welding, there are still problems like porosity, solidification cracking, and loss of lithium. This is why solid state friction stir welding is important in this alloy. It is known that using Al-Cu-Li alloy and friction stir welding to super lightweight external tank for space shuttle, significant weight reduction has been achieved. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of friction stir tool rotation speed on mechanical and microstructural properties of Al-Cu-Li alloy. The plates were joined with friction stir welding process using different tool rotation speeds (300-800 rpm) and welding speeds (120-420 mm/min), which are the two prime welding parameters in this process.


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