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Up Topic Welding Industry / General Welding Discussion / minimum kilojoule requirement
- - By dmilesdot (**) Date 06-10-2009 12:27
Our manual has a minimum kilojoule requirement for welding on 588 steel.  Does anyone know of a reason to have a minimum requirement?  This has been in our manual since the early 80's but no one here knows why there is a mimimum.  D1.5 has no such requirement.  Any discussion would be appreciated.
Dave
Parent - - By eekpod (****) Date 06-10-2009 13:24
Couldn't it be a range pertaining to D1.5?  This way you can have the minimum heat input and also know that as long as you didn't go below that value that the weld should be good.  As opposed to guys who always turn up the machines and burn it in.  My understanding is that D1.5 is more critical on heat input than D1.1
Parent - By js55 (*****) Date 06-10-2009 17:10
If you keep in mind that I am not immediately familiar with the material in question, in general minimum heat input can be as critical to impacts as maximum, especially when the toughness of the mateiral relies on tempering from subsequent weld beads. One of the ways is that lower heat input does not penetrate its energy as deeply as high high heat input and therefore a smaller volume fraction of tempered weld metal may result, which can reduce toughness. Even if you PWHT there are other factors such as carbide precipitation which can be increased through subsequent beads and improve toughness. In some cases higher heat input can temper HAZ's better. In reality toughness is not exclusively controlled by maximum heat input. Thats just the general thinkng because thats what most code bodies and/or specifications impose based predominantly on grain size emphasis.
High heat input may cause larger grain size but those grains may be tempered better than smaller grains.
Parent - - By HgTX (***) Date 06-10-2009 17:41
Have you asked Warren Alexander?  He probably wrote the requirement himself.

D1.5 has no explicit minimum heat input requirements but sort of implies them in the ranges given in the fracture-critical preheat tables, which don't go below 30 kJ/in.  (I don't take "sort of implies" as any kind of gospel, and a lot of manual welding procedures will run under the left edge of those tables and it doesn't bother me, but that's just me.)

There's no serious reason to treat A 709 Gr. 50W as radically different from Gr. 50.

Hg
Parent - By dmilesdot (**) Date 06-11-2009 13:15
HgTX, I took your advice and called Mr. Alexander.  He said that it was indeed to help control the hardness after welding.  Thanks for your response.
Dave
Up Topic Welding Industry / General Welding Discussion / minimum kilojoule requirement

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