Correlations between Charpy impact energy and fracture toughness values have continuously been developed because of their applicability in structural integrity assessment methodologies. This also applies to the integrity analysis of welded joints, which represent material discontinuities and potential failure locus in structures. Therefore, in effective FFS methodology applications, the fracture toughness of welded joints located in critical regions should be accurately estimated. This work addresses an estimation procedure of fracture toughness values based on Charpy impact energy for low alloy, steel welds made from an ASTM A572 Gr 50 base plate material. To produce the welded joints, two processes were used: SMAW and FCAW. To ensure valid toughness test values corresponding to high constraint conditions, a strength overmatched, deeply-cracked SE(B) configuration having a weld centerline notch was adopted. The ductile-to-brittle transition curve was established by means of Charpy tests. Direct CVN correlations with fracture toughness, as well as reference temperature based correlations derived from the Master Curve approach, were evaluated. The obtained results indicate that both correlation procedures are suitable for weld metal toughness estimations based on Charpy data. However, slightly different values of correlation constants than those indicated for the base metal should be employed in the case of the reference temperature method.

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The classificatory method is considered a straightforward and robust procedure for the assessment of welded joints in metallic structures. The methodology adopts a set of S-N diagrams with a conservative survival rate, which expresses the fatigue performance of the most employed joint configurations. In the design phase, the adoption of a structural detail correlated with a higher curve in the set conducts to high structural integrity. Nevertheless, fatigue phenomenon is essentially multifactorial and, consequently, several optimizing alternatives may be applied for life increasing. Studies focused on continuous (weldless) parts correlate fatigue performance with the material ultimate strength. Transferring this approach to welded parts, adoption of a high-strength filler metal, or any procedure intended to mitigate metallurgical inhomogeneity in the weld-affected region may propitiate fatigue life improvement. In other sense, issues related to bead geometry, notably the notch effect associated with weld toe, are also reported to have an essential influence on fatigue life of structural details. This work aims to counterbalance material and bead geometry aspects related to fatigue performance of butt joints subjected to repeated transverse loading. Two welding processes, FCAW and GMAW, as well as different filler metals and parameters, were adopted for specimens manufacturing. The ASTM-A572-Gr.50 steel was employed as a parent metal. After welding, FCAW joints presented better mechanical and metallurgical characteristics. Additionally, in order to characterize the relevance of the notch effect, half of the specimens had the original bead geometry maintained, while the others underwent a manual removal of the reinforcement. The obtained results indicate that FCAW joints present better fatigue performance in the as-welded state. However, after removing the reinforcements, both welding processes attained similar results, suggesting that the notch effect has more relevance for fatigue life than mechanical and metallurgical characteristics of the joint. Consequently, the superior performance presented by the FCAW joints in the as-welded state is assigned to the final shape of the reinforcements, which is smoother than in the GMAW case. The higher capacity of penetration and better filler metal wettability propitiated by the FCAW process is responsible for the lower notch effect.

This work investigates and compares the fatigue performance of laser-welded joints of two press hardening steels: a standard 22MnB5 and a variant modified by a combination of niobium and molybdenum (NbMo) alloying. The results indicate that joint geometry aspects, superposed to an intrusion-generated damage mechanism, were prevalent in causing a poor fatigue life in the case of peak stress values greater than 11% of the base metal's ultimate strength being around 1450 MPa. As identical process procedures were employed, the tests allowed investigating the influence of the alloy design on fatigue performance. The results of geometrical analysis and fatigue tests indicated that the NbMo modified alloy performed better than the standard 22MnB5 steel. The results also suggest that, if extremely tight quality limits are used in the manufacturing procedures, laser-welded joints of press hardened steels could offer a very favorable fatigue performance being considerably better than that of conventional and high strength structural steels.