Proceedings of the Twenty-first (2011) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference Maui, Hawaii, USA, June 19-24,

2011 Copyright 2011 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE) ISBN 978-1-880653-96-8 (Set); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set); www.isope.org

Microstructure and Toughness of Friction Stir Weld of 12 mm Thick Structural Steel

Muneo Matsushita, Yasushi Kitani, Rinsei Ikeda and Shigeru Endo

Joining & Strength Research Department, JFE Steel Corporation Chiba, Japan

ABSTRACT
Friction stir welding (FSW) was performed with single-sided one-pass butt welding using 12 mm thick structural steel plates with tensile strength of 400 N mm-2 grade. Investigated were the microstructures and mechanical properties such as Vickers hardness, tensile strength, and Charpy V-notch toughness of the weld joint, which verified the inhomogeneous features of microstructure and toughness within the stir zone (SZ). Thermal cycle examinations with or without deformation at peak temperature were undertaken to study this characteristic of SZ, using a thermomechanical testing apparatus. It is indicated that the variation of thermal cycle, especially the peak temperature, within SZ takes a predominant role on the characteristic of SZ.

undertakings of simulating microstructure of SZ using thermomechanical testing apparatus have been reported (Sinfield et al., 2008; Posada, 2008). Those studies demonstrated that the manipulation of thermo-mechanical cycle, consisting of heating, deformation at peak temperature and cooling, successfully simulated the resultant microstructure of SZ. Nonetheless, there have been few papers that discussed the characteristics of microstructure and toughness within SZ in conjunction with thermal cycle simulation. Due to the asymmetric flow of plasticized metal in the stir zone (SZ) derived from the rotation and traverse motions of the welding tool, the variation of the thermal cycle must be expected not only within the heat affected zone (HAZ) but also within SZ, while deformation at high temperatures is considered to yield in SZ during the thermal cycle. These are unique phenomena of FSW and unlike the welds of conventional fusion welding processes, where the thermal cycle is assumed to be homogeneous, experiencing the solidification and transformation during cooling. However, the influence of those on the metallurgical and mechanical properties has not been fully understood. In this work, the microstructures and mechanical properties such as Vickers hardness, tensile strength, and Charpy V-notch toughness were investigated on the friction stir weld joint of 12 mm thick structural steel plates with tensile strength of 400 N mm-2 grade to characterize the metallurgical and mechanical properties within SZ. Moreover, synthetic thermal cycle examinations were undertaken to simulate the characteristics, using a thermal testing apparatus.

KEY WORDS: thick steel plate; friction stir welding; stir zone; microstructure; toughness; thermal cycle; deformation. INTRODUCTION
FSW (Thomas et al., 1991), a solid-state joining process that enables the production of a high quality weld joint with less distortion, has been widely studied and increasingly implemented in industrial applications for materials with low melting temperatures such as aluminum and magnesium alloys (Dawes et al., 1991; Park et al., 2003a). However, the research and development of FSW for steels has progressed more slowly and remains at the early stage due to the limited durability of welding tool. In recent years, the developments of the tool materials have improved their durability and enabled the welding of steels in a laboratory scale. A number of studies have been reported on FSW of steels such as the interstitial free (IF) steel (Fujii et al., 2006a), carbon steels (Thomas et al., 1999; Lienert et al., 2003; Fujii et al., 2006b; Cui et al., 2007a; Cui et al., 2007b) and stainless steels (Park et al., 2003b; Sato et al., 2005a; Sato et al., 2005b). Some of them especially detailed the FSW process for the ferrous materials, investigating the influence of the thermal history and the carbon content on the microstructures of the welds (Fujii et al., 2006b; Cui et al., 2007a; Cui et al., 2007b). There are a few studies for FSW of steel plates thicker than 10 mm (Thomas et al., 1999; Konkol et al., 2003). Also, the microstructure and toughness of the weld of X-65 and X-80 grade steels thicker than 10 mm were studied (Ayer et al. 2008). On the other hand, the

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
12mm thick structural steel plates with tensile strength of 400N mm-2 grade were used for the experiments. Table 1 shows the chemical composition, transition temperatures, and toughness of tested steel plates. Ac1 and Ac3 temperatures are given in Eqs. 1 and 2 (Andrews, 1965).
Ac1 (K) = 723 10.7 Mn 16.9 Ni + 29.1Si + 16.9Cr + 290 As + 6.38W + 273

(1)
Ac3 (K) = 910 203 C 15.2 Ni + 44.7 Si + 104V + 31.5Mo + 13.1W + 273

(2) where the contents of alloying elements are given by mass fractions (mass%) in the equations above. Fig. 1 exhibits the representative

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