Influência do metal de adição e da energia de soldagem na microestrutura e resistência à fadiga de juntas soldadas de aço de alta resistência e baixa liga DIN S700MC

Abstract

High strength and low alloy steels (HSLA) are attractive alternative in structural applications. Due to the low carbon and alloying elements (Ni, V and Ti) contents, HSLA steels show good levels of toughness and mechanical strength, besides good weldability, allowing use of lighter structural components, fuel economy, as well as the development of environmentally-friendly constructions and sustainable societies. The good combination of mechanical properties allows HSLA steels to be widely used in shipbuilding oil industry and automotive industry. For these applications, welding technology is inevitable, however it produces localized microstructural changes and reduction in the levels of mechanical strenght, residual stresses and undesirable defects, which generate potential problems of security and reliability. These welding defects accentuate the fatigue failure process when mechanical components are subjected to cyclic loads. In this work, the influence of the gas metal arc welding process (GMAW) on microstructure, mechanical properties and fatigue life of the HSLA DIN EN 10149 S700MC steel was studied, applying three welding speeds and two different addition metals (AWS ER 70 S-6 and AWS E 110C-G-M). For this purpose, samples of this HSLA steel and welded joints of these two addition metals were studied by microstructural analysis, uniaxial tension tests, microhardness tests and uniaxial tension fatigue tests. The results showed that the welding speed did not cause significant changes in the microstructure of the weld metal and of the heat-affected zone, in the microhardness and in the tensile strength, when the same weld metal was used. However, higher welding speeds caused the increase of the undercut defect. Besides that, an increase in fatigue life of the component with the decrease in welding speed was verified. When welded samples produced with the same welding speed were compared, an increase in the ratio of acicular ferrite in the weld metal zone, in the tensile stress and, consequently, an improvement in the fatigue life of the component was observe as a function of the increase in mechanical resistance of the weld metal.