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Effects of temperature on tensile and impact

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Article in Materials and Design · August 2010

DOI: 10.1016/j.matdes.2010.01.055

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 Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Effects of temperature on tensile and impact behavior of dissimilar welds

of rotor steels
Ming-Liang Zhu, Fu-Zhen Xuan *
Key Laboratory of Safety Science of Pressurized System, MOE, School of Mechanical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130, Meilong Street,
PO Box 402, Shanghai 200237, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Tensile and impact behavior of dissimilar weld joints of newly developed rotor steels 23CrMoNiWV88
Received 5 November 2009 and 26NiCrMoV145 were conducted at various temperatures below 350 °C. Inhomogeneous microstruc-
Accepted 31 January 2010 tures and asymmetrical micro-hardness along the dissimilar welding joint were observed. With the
Available online 8 February 2010
increase of temperature, strength decreased which was associated with the increased plasticity, and frac-
ture location changed from weld metal (WM) to intermediate pressure (IP) base metal (BM) at around
Keywords: 300 °C. Compared to the homogeneous impact specimen with two fracture zones at fracture surface, a
Dissimilar welding
combined quasi-cleavage and ductile fracture mode with three zones is observed at the fracture surface
Tensile
Temperature
of the dissimilar weld joint when the testing temperature is in the range of 0–40 °C. The occurrence of
Rotor steels separated zones are mainly ascribed to the multi-layer welding process and thus improved the impact
toughness of the welding joint.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
To meet various property requirements in an integrated struc-
ture, dissimilar welds are widely used in engineering to join differ-
ent metals together. In the past several decades, a mass of studies
have been carried out on the manufacture of traditional fusion
welding [1–5], advanced friction stir welding [6–8] and the proper-
ties of dissimilar weld joints, e.g., fatigue [9], creep [10], fracture
[11], limit load [12], structure integrity assessment [13], residual
stress [14] and so on. However, the performance of welded joints
is affected not only by material properties of base metal (BM), weld
metal (WM) and heat affected zone (HAZ), but also by the geome-
try of the weldment constituents and the location of preexisting
defects. The strength design and reliability assessment of dissimi-
lar weld joints is still a complex issue in practice. In addition,
temperature changes during service will affect the performance
of dissimilar weld joints and this has not been adequately dis-
cussed in the existing researches.
Recently, in view of increasing capacity while reducing delivery
time, welding methods have been widely used in power industry
field to manufacture large components such as the welded turbine
rotors [15]. In addition, multilayer or multipass technique is often
utilized in welding thick plates [16–18] due to its advantage of
normalizing prelayer (prepass) microstructures to increase ductil-
ity and improve quality [19,20]. In fact, the welded components
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 64252819; fax: +86 21 64253425.
E-mail address: fzxuan@ecust.edu.cn (F.-Z. Xuan).
such as welded rotor of nuclear power plants often works at mod-
erate temperatures. Therefore, it is quite significant to investigate
effects of temperature on performance of dissimilar welds used
in nuclear power plants.
In this work, tensile and impact behavior of the dissimilar weld-
ing joint of two nuclear rotor steels, i.e., 23CrMoNiWV88 for inter-
mediate pressure (IP) part and 26NiCrMoV145 for low pressure
(LP) part, were investigated at various temperatures. Effects of
temperature on strength, fracture location and fracture surface
are highlighted in this report.
2. Experiments
The chemical compositions of the dissimilar welding BM are
shown in Table 1. From Table 1 it can been seen that IP BM has a
large content of Cr while LP BM exhibits a larger content of Ni. Be-
fore welding, IP steel was quenched at 920 °C for 36.5 h with water
spraying and tempered at 645 °C for 30 h while LP steel was
quenched at 840 °C for 55 h with water immersion and tempered
at 585 °C for 60 h. Mechanical properties of IP and LP are listed
in Table 2. As shown in Fig. 1, the IP and LP steels were butt-welded
by tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding at the bottom and submerged
arc welding (SAW) at the top in the radial direction. Post weld heat
treatment (PWHT) was performed at 620 °C for 10 h. In this re-
search, specimens for tensile and impact tests were cut off only
from the SAW welding part, as depicted in Fig. 1.
Surfaces of specimens for optical microscope observations were
mechanically polished and then chemically etched in a solution of

0261-3069/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2010.01.055
 M.-L. Zhu, F.-Z. Xuan / Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352 3347

Table 1
Chemical composition of base materials in IP and LP (wt.%).

Materials C Si Mn P S Ni Cr Mo V Sn As Sb
IP, 23CrMoNiWV88 0.23 0.06 0.70 0.006 0.002 0.74 2.09 0.82 0.29 0.005 0.005 0.0013
LP, 26NiCrMoV145 0.25 0.04 0.29 0.005 0.001 3.56 1.71 0.38 0.09 0.003 0.004 0.0013

Table 2
Mechanical properties of base materials in IP and LP.

Materials Yield Ultimate Elonga- Reduction

strength tensile tion d, % of area
r0.2, MPa strength w, %
rb, MPa
IP, 23CrMoNiWV88 703 816 19 74
LP, 26NiCrMoV145 835.5 938 20 73

4% HNO3 + ethanol. Micro-Vickers hardness measurements were

conducted on a hardness tester (HXD-1000TM) with a constant
load of 4.9 N. Two specimens, which were machined out of the
upper and down sides SAW welding joint in the radial direction
(as shown in Fig. 1), with a size of 30  10  3.6 mm were prepared
for micro-hardness testing and all the hardness value were ob-
tained along the center line.
Tensile tests were carried out at both room and moderate tem-
peratures. For each temperature, three tensile specimens with a
diameter of 10 mm were machined at different locations in the ra-
dial direction (Fig. 1). Charpy V-notch impact specimens were also
obtained with a size of 55  10  10 mm. The V type notch was lo-
cated in the middle of the WM (formed along the back face of the
machined testing materials, as shown in Fig. 1) with a depth of
2 mm and a root radius of 0.25 mm.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Microstructure characterization along the dissimilar welding joint

Fig. 2 shows the microstructure changes along the dissimilar

welding joint. It is worth noting that ferritic islands are exhibited
on WM near the fusion lines and coarse grained zones are evident
on the other side of fusion lines (as shown in Fig. 2a and b). The
existences of soft ferritic islands (also known as d ferrites [21]),
which will definitely reduce the micro-hardness, is reasonably
attributed to the higher welding temperature at fusion zones
[22]. Unlike d ferrites observed near the fusion lines, as shown in Fig. 2. Microstructure along the dissimilar welding joint: for the interfaces between
Fig. 2c, the microstructure of WM has a martensite matrix with LP side HAZ and WM, ferritic islands were observed on WM near the fusion lines (a),
the embedded strip-like bainites. and ferritic islands were also displayed on WM at IP side (b), the microstructure of
WM (c) mainly includes strip-like bainites and martenites martrix.

Fig. 1. Schematic of specimen preparation from the dissimilar weld joint.

3348 M.-L. Zhu, F.-Z. Xuan / Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352

100

Ultimate tensile and yield strength(MPa)

upper side
400

Elongation and reduction area(%)

800
downside
80
Vickers hardness, HV

350
600
IP HAZ LP HAZ
Weld metal and BM 60
and BM
Ultimate tensile strength
300
400 Yield strength
Reduction area 40
Elongation
250
200 20

200
0 0
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 0 100 200 300 400

Distance to weld center(mm) Temperature(°C)

Fig. 3. Micro-hardness distribution along the center line of upper and down sides of Fig. 4. Effect of temperature on the tensile performance of dissimilar SAW weld
SAW welding joint. joint.

upper side in Fig. 3. Though short of test data in base materials,

3.2. Micro-hardness distribution along the dissimilar welding joint
Fig. 3 shows the micro-hardness distribution along the center
line of upper and down sides SAW welding joint (as indicated in
Fig. 1). The interval between two hardness measurement points
in HAZ and BM is fixed at 0.3 mm while in WM, the distance is
1 mm. It can be seen that in the two locations, the hardness values
near the fusion lines increased to the peak point and then de-
creased gradually to the lowest point in HAZ. It is reasonably con-
cluded that the abrupt decrease of hardness value near the fusion
lines is related to the existence of d ferrites on WM [23]. A lower
extent of fluctuation of hardness value can be observed in WM at
the average value of hardness in LP side BM is expected to be larger
than that in IP side BM, regardless of the tested location. These are
in consistent with the corresponding strength in IP and LP (as
shown in Table 2).
As can be seen in Fig. 3, the width of WM in upper side is larger
than that in downside. This agrees well with the actual width of
WM (WM at upper side has a width of about 21.5 mm, whereas
in downside, the width is approximately 20.5 mm). It is worth not-
ing that the overall value of hardness along the downside weld
joint has a tendency to be lower than those of the upper side,
excluding the hardness value at fusion lines between WM and LP
HAZ.

Fig. 5. Macro-graphs of the tensile fracture surface at different temperatures.

 M.-L. Zhu, F.-Z. Xuan / Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352 3349

Fig. 6. Tensile fracture mode characterization of the specimen at 100 °C.

Fig. 8. Changes of failure location in tensile tests at different temperatures.

3.3. Tensile performance and temperature influences

3.3.1. Tensile behavior

Fig. 7. Comparison of dimple size on the fracture surface corresponding to different
temperatures: (a) specimen at 25 °C with small equal-axial dimples, (b) specimen at
350 °C with larger and deeper dimples.
Tensile tests were conducted at various temperatures of 25 °C,
100 °C, 200 °C, 300 °C and 350 °C, and corresponding results are
shown in Fig. 4. With increasing the temperature, both ultimate
tensile strength (UTS) and yield strength (YS) decrease while
reduction area and elongation increase gradually. Interestingly,
an abnormal behavior is observed at 200 °C where the reduction
area is almost the lowest but elongation is not changed comparing
with data at 100 °C.
3350 M.-L. Zhu, F.-Z. Xuan / Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352

850 as shown in Fig. 5a–e. This implies the decreased yield strength of
weld joints. On the other hand, the fibrous zone and radiation area
Ultimate tensile strength(MPa)

Weld metal
on the fracture surface tends to merge with the increasing temper-
800 Weld joint
ature and thus leads to the increased plastic behavior [24].
The tensile fracture mode of dissimilar weld joint at 100 °C is
750 further characterized in Fig. 6. Interestingly, the ductile fracture
mode indicated with dimples is observed on the three locations
(locations 2–4). Tearing lines can be clearly seen in location 3
700
and the dimples are mainly located in the shear lip zone. Actually,
all the fracture surfaces show the ductile fracture mode. With the
650 temperature increased, the size and depth of dimples increase
which is associated with the improved plastic behavior, as shown
in Fig. 7.
600
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Temperature(°C) 3.3.2. Fracture location
Another interesting point should be mentioned is the changes of
Fig. 9. Comparison of UTS in WM and weld joint at different temperatures. fracture location with the increase of temperature. Liu et al. [25,26]
reported that tensile fracture location is dependent on weld
Macro-graphs of the tensile fracture surface at different temper- parameters in friction stir welded joints. In this work, as shown
atures are depicted in Fig. 5. The typical characteristics of tensile in Fig. 8, fracture located in WM when temperature is below
fracture surface is shown in Fig. 5b which mainly includes fibrous 200 °C. However, when the temperature is greater than 300 °C,
zone, radiation area and shear lip zone. With the increase of tem- the fracture location in tension is transferred to IP BM. Fig. 9 shows
perature, the size of shear lip zone increases and becomes evident the comparison of UTS in WM and weld joint at different

Fig. 10. Micro-morphology of impact test fracture surface at different temperatures.

 M.-L. Zhu, F.-Z. Xuan / Materials and Design 31 (2010) 3346–3352
Fig. 11. Micro-morphology of the three zones in Fig. 10g: zones A (a) and B (c) with
a combined quasi-cleavage and ductile fracture mode on the surface; zone C (b)
with a ductile fracture mode.
temperatures. From Fig. 9 it can be seen that UTS of weld joint is
greater than those of WM at various temperatures and by compar-
ing with the strength at 200 °C, UTS was increased in both WM and
weld joint at 300 °C. It is likely that weld joint and WM were
strengthened after testing at 300 °C but it is not clear here whether
the two base metals are strengthened or not. The fact of tensile fail-
ure in IP BM implies that the weakest point of the dissimilar weld
joint changes from WM to IP BM at 300 °C. The most possible rea-
son for this change is that IP BM was not strengthened but de-
creased to the weakest point of the weld joint.
3.4. Fracture surface of impact specimen
Standard Charpy V-notch impact tests were conducted at vari-
ous temperatures with a notch located at the centre of WM. The
micro-morphology of impact fracture surface at different tempera-
tures is shown in Fig. 10. Typical impact surface can be observed at
low (Fig. 10a–c) and higher temperatures (Fig. 10h and i). When
test temperature is in the range of 0–40 °C, however, fracture sur-
face of impact specimen exhibits two different zones (indicated by
A and B) as divided by C (shown in Fig. 10d–g).
For this case, the detailed fracture mode at different zones in
Fig. 10g was illustrated in Fig. 11. From Fig. 11a and b it can be seen
3351
that the quasi-cleavage is the dominant fracture mode with a little
of dimples in zones A and B. While in zone C, only ductile mode of
fracture is observed as indicated in Fig. 11c. This indicated a com-
bined quasi-cleavage and ductile fracture modes of the dissimilar
weld joint when the testing temperature is in the range of 0–
40 °C. When the testing temperature is out of the discussed range,
a single fracture mode is observed in the fracture surface of speci-
men. For instance when temperature is below zero, a large amount
of quasi-cleavage fracture is observed in the fracture surface of
specimen, as indicated in Fig. 10c.
In this report, the occurrence of separated zones in Fig. 10d–g is
related to the multi-layer welding process [20]. It is also interest-
ing to note that the occurrence of welding layers is accorded with
the ductile-to-brittle transition behavior of impact tests. As shown
in Fig. 10, welding layers appeared only in the ductile-to-brittle
transition region. This implies that the impact toughness of the
weld joint is influenced by both test temperature and the multi-
layer welding process.
For the homogeneous impact specimen, an inner zone with the
brittle fracture mode and an outer zone with the ductile fracture
mode at the fracture surface are generally observed at transition
temperatures [27]. However, for the dissimilar weld joints dis-
cussed herein, the inner brittle fracture surface consists of zones
(A and B) separated by ductile strips (C). It can be reasonably con-
cluded that the impact toughness of dissimilar weld joints has
been improved and fracture appearance transition temperature
(FATT) is lower than that of homogeneous specimen.
4. Conclusion
In this work, effect of temperature on the mechanical behavior
of dissimilar welds of newly developed rotor steels was investi-
gated. The main conclusions are listed as follows:
(1) Inhomogeneous microstructures and asymmetrical micro-
hardness along the dissimilar welding joint are observed.
With the increasing of temperature, both UTS and YS
decrease while the plastic behavior is improved which is
associated with the merging of the fibrous zone with the
radiation area.
(2) With the increase of temperature, fracture location of tensile
specimen is changed from WM to IP BM. This indicates that
IP BM become the weakest point in the dissimilar welding
joint due to the increased temperature.
(3) Compared to the homogeneous impact specimen with two
fracture zones at fracture surface, a combined quasi-cleav-
age and ductile fracture mode with three zones is observed
at the fracture surface of the dissimilar weld joint when
the testing temperature is in the range of 0–40 °C at transi-
tion temperatures. This can be mainly attributed to the
multi-layer welding process and thus improves the impact
toughness of the dissimilar weld joint.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the supports provided by National
Natural Science Foundations of China (50 835 003, 10 972 078).
FZ would also wish to thank the Research Fund for Doctoral Pro-
gram of Higher Education (200 802 510 003) and Natural Science
Foundation of Shanghai (09JC1404400).
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