Although high strength steels represent yield strength up to 1300 MPa, welded structures reveal lowerstrength values. The strongest commercially available electrode provides the yield strength of about900 MPa. Therefore, in welded steels with strength above this type of filler metal, achieving anacceptable global strength is a crucial issue.
In this master thesis, affects of different welding procedures on static strength of welded jointsof Weldox 960 and Weldox 1100 steels, were studied. These steels are produced by SSAB inOxelösund. Meanwhile, finite element method analyses were applied in order to investigatethe static strength behavior of such weldments under uniaxial tension.
The welding parameters which were selected as variables are:
- Heat input
- Weld joint geometry
- Filler metal
When weld metal is undermatching in strength levels than the base material, by applyingtension the soft weld metal begins to deform before parent metal. At that point thedeformation of resulted soft zone, including the weld metal and the heat affected zone, ishindered by high strength parent metal. Thus, uniaxial stress caused by uniaxial load isconverted to multiaxial stress. This conversion in tension results in increase in the staticstrength of weldment. The increase in strength is emphasized by increase in the width of thewelded joint while the thickness of the plate is kept as constant.
After experiments and performing FEM studies, it was revealed that the static strength ofWeldox 960 welded joints approaches towards the tensile strength of parent metal by increasein the width of the weldment. In Weldox 1100 joints; a slight increase in tensile properties ofthe weldments, when the width of the sample increases, was observed.