Evaluation on the Corrosion and Wear Resistance of Welding Zone Welded with Plasma Transferred Arc Welding Method

Abstract

There are many welding methods which have been currently performed to prolong the life time of exhaust valve of marine engine from an economic point of view. In this study, one of these welding methods, plasma transferred arc (PTA) welding was performed at the base metal of Nimonic 80A which would be used as the material of exhaust valve with three kinds of filler metals such as Stellite 6, Inconel 625 and Inconel 718. The mechanical and corrosion characteristics were investigated with electrochemical and wear loss test methods. The Nimonic 80A as the base metal had a better corrosion resistance than those of the weld metals welded with three types of the filler metals. However, after post weld heat treatment, all these weld metals mentioned above exhibited better corrosion resistance compared to the base metal, shifting the corrosion potential to the noble direction, and pitting corrosion was more or less observed at the surface of Nimonic 80A after post weld heat treatment. In particular, Inconel 625 showed the best corrosion resistance among the filler metals after heat treatment. The wear ratio of Stellite 6 showed the lowest value due to its highest hardness among the filler metals, however, its ratio by cavitation test exhibited the highest value. It is considered that increasing of embrittlement with increasing the hardness was resulted in increasing the wear loss by cavitation test.