No abstract

Vibration of welded parts is usually applied to achieve effects similar to thermal stress relief. With vibration, it is not only residual stresses that are affected. Using two different welding processes, the influence of vibration on hardness and toughness of the weld was measured. For each welding process, two series of Charpy specimens were made over the temperature range from 260 to z20uC. The only difference between the two series was in performing welding with or without vibration. Slight differences in weld metal hardness were observed. Toughness measurements show an increase in impact toughness and a significant increase in fracture toughness in samples which were vibrated during welding.

Vibration during welding can be used to obtain certain changes in mechanical properties of weld metal. Research work on the influence of vibration on the secondary microstructure of welds and hence on the Charpy toughness was performed. Vibration during welding exhibits positive effects on the microstructure constituent formation. Multipass welding was simulated with reheating of the original single pass weld in order to obtain similar microstructure to multipass welds. Microstructures were examined with an optical microscope. Additionally, fractographic examination of the rupture of Charpy specimens was performed. Changes in the microstructure according to vibration were observed which affect toughness of the weld metal. Vibration during welding was rated more effective in the case of reheating the weld metal, which is the case in multipass welding.

The fracture toughness of the HAZ in welds on a HSLA structural steel was assessed by using two types of precracked small-scale fracture-mechanics specimens. The microstructure of the single-and double-pass HAZs was simulated on a Gleeble machine at two different cooling rates. A direct measurement of K Ic was not possible due to the limited size of both kinds of specimens. A suitable adaptation of the loading diagrams was performed in order to produce relevant data about the fracture properties of the investigated sub-zones of the HAZ.