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Preheating is carried out to avoid cold cracking in steel welding. The occurrence of cold cracking is considered to be governed by accumulating diffusible hydrogen, welding residual stresses and hardness at the crack initiation site. The hydrogen accumulating at the crack site depends on the initial diffusible hydrogen content in weld metal, the weld heat input and the wall thickness. The local residual stress is governed by the weld metal yield strength, the joint restraint and the notch stress concentration factor. The HAZ hardness is influenced by the steel chemical composition, the weld heat input and the plate (wall) thickness.These influential factors affect cold cracking independenly or in an interacted manner . It must be, thus, difficult to predict the necessary preheat temperature by a theoretical method or simple formulae. The method presently proposed is completely based on the empirical results by y-groove weld cracking tests. The present method determines the necessary preheat temperature through the charts describing the following respective effects 1) steel composition ; 2) diffusible hydrogen content of weld metal ; 3) weld heat input ; 4) wall thickness ; 5) weld metal yield strength ; 6) joint restraint. As to the steel composition, this method uses CEN carbon equivalent that preferably assesses weldability of a wide variety of steels. Also, this method considers a logarithmic dependence of the weld metal hydrogen and the analysis of hydrogen diffusion in a weld has proved that the hydrogen effect on cold cracking must be logarithmic.

High toughness are requested in the weld metals for offshore steel structures and steel line-pipes used at low ambient temperatures. Micro-alloying of titanium and boron effectively improves the toughness of low-alloyed weld metals with tensile strength ranging between 490 and 590 N/mm2. It is well known that refined intragranular ferrite or acicular ferrite nucleates on titanium containing oxides. However, there have been few reports on the chemical composition at local positions of these effective inclusions and their crystal structures.Two types of submerged arc weld metals were used ; one is a silicon-and-manganese type weld metal with a ferrite with aligned second phase and the other is a titanium type one with the acicular ferrite. The mechanical and metallurgical examination included the microscopic observation, Charpy impact tests of the welds and the characterization of oxides in weld metals with X-ray diffractions and analytical electron microscope.The following facts were clarified from the above investigations. The oxides in the titanium bearing weld metal are crystallized in a form of (Mn, Ti) (Al, Ti)2O4 with angularly rugged surfaces, while the oxides of a Si-Mn type are amorphous with smooth spherical shape. Titanium as low as 0.005 wt% in a weld metal satisfactorily crystallized oxides if titanium is included in oxides with aluminum and manganese.

The formation and stability of inclusions in low alloy steel welds were investigated using equilibrium calculations. Based on the results, the origin of inclusions effective in acicular ferrite production is discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the effect of the Al/O ratio and titanium addition on inclusion formation since these two factors are experimentally critical to acicular ferrite production. Mullite (2SiO2.3Al2O3) is found to be formed in addition to Ti3O5 in the steel melt at 1800 K when the melt has a wt-%Al/wt-%O ratio of ∼0·6 optimum for acicular ferrite production. However, the mullite is unstable in the austenite and galaxite (MnO.Al2O3), having the spinel structure, becomes stable at the lower temperatures. Therefore, it is proposed that galaxite is responsible for the nucleation of acicular ferrite. The formation of the galaxite should be in the solid state after weld solidification, being associated with pre-existing mullite. Titanium additions are found to be beneficial to acicular ferrite production by decreasing the formation of ineffective glassy oxide.