AAR TC 128 Gr B Weld Failure Analysis

Since Trenergy started building rail tank cars, the company has suffered from weld cracking on
long seams. Tank car shell material is AAR TC 128 Gr B, which is high tensile C – Mn – Si
(Carbon–Manganese –Silicon) steel. The minimum tensile strength for this material is 81 Ksi
according to AAR Appendix M table M.3. This material is not commonly recognized as ASME or
ASTM material in the industry, so consumable manufacturers don’t recommend what
consumable should be used for welding it.

The customer mandated Trenergy to run all Procedure Qualification Records (PQR) with 1% Ni
consumables. The Min tensile strength of this consumable is 80 Ksi and the 1% Ni improves
toughness, so at first glance this did make sense, but in our case it didn’t work properly because
of the crack susceptible nature of AAR TC 128 Gr B.

The joint is a butt joint which is welded from both sides with Submerged Arc Welding (SAW)
process.

At first, we changed the size of the run off tab but that didn’t help. The next corrective action
was rotating the cans after welding inside, to have the outside pass welded in the opposite
direction. We then thought the base metal was potentially not hot enough, and therefore we
were not able to get enough penetration at the start point. We also thought that because the
weld pool always pushes impurities out of itself, there was potential to see cracking at the end
of each pass. Discontinuities such as this can result in cracking under stress. We tried to
improve the tack weld quality by lengthening the tack welds and then ensuring that the tack
welds were completely gouged from outside after welding the inside. These corrective actions
helped us but they didn’t solve the cracking issue completely.

We furthered our investigation to try and find out in which step of the manufacturing process
the long seam cracks were occurring in and what type of cracks we were dealing with. We
spent more than 40 hours performing RT in different stages and we found that it was a
solidification crack (hot crack) that occurs during welding.

Three types of hot cracks occur in welded joints, namely:

- Liquation cracks

- Solidification cracks, which are formed during solidification in the weld metal, and are most
often orientated towards the weld axis, in the direction of columnar crystals. (Our case)

- Polygonization cracks
As an ASME stamp holder company, we have more than four decades of experience welding on
different ASME materials, we tried to find an ASME equivalent of AAR TC 128 by reviewing
chemical and mechanical properties and we found that it is equal to ASME SA-612 which is
pressure vessel plate for low temperature. [Ref 1][Ref 2]

Lincoln Electric is a pioneer of welding consumable manufacturing and has a Welding

Consumable Selector Guide which recommends welding SA-612 with 880M (Flux)/L56 (Wire).
This is the regular flux and wire that Trenergy has used for more than twenty years to weld
ASME P number 1 materials.[ Ref 5]

The question was raised, why doesn't Lincoln recommend using 1% Ni consumable on this
material? Further investigation into industry codes and university references show us there is
an index which characterizes susceptibility to the formation of cracks at solidification in
submerged arc welding analyzing the molten metal.[Ref 8, Page 1]

UCS (Units of Crack Susceptibility) = 230C +190 S + 75 P + 45 Nb – 12.3 Si – 5.4 Mn – 1

The risk of cracking is negligible when the UCS parameter is lower than 10 and very large when
it is higher than 30.the UCS in our case was 27 which shows susceptibility to solidification
cracking. When running different samples and performing chemical analyses on the base metal
and the weld metal, we found that our weld is susceptible to solidification cracking and there is
literature that has solutions for this.

Comparison of the base metal chemical composition and the weld metal chemical composition
shows that the dilution of weld metal is around 60%, which can improve susceptibility to
solidification cracking because when the dilution is high, the weld pool gets more alloying
elements from the base metal, [Ref 6][Ref 7]. The best solution is a change of wire to a
flux/wire which has more Mn and Si like the 880M/L56 that Lincoln recommended, because the
Ni in the wire being used works as an impurity. [Re7] [Ref 8, Page 2]. It is also beneficial to to
decrease the land to have lower Dilution. Grain size report also shows that average grain size
on the HAZ of welded joint is 5.5 which is 9 on the base metal. It shows the growth of grains
during welding by high Heat Input.[Ref 9]

In conclusion, as evidences show welding of AAR TC 128 with 1 % Ni is not recommended

because of susceptible structure of material. the best solution for that can be using of welding
consumables which have more beneficial alloying elements like Lincoln L56/880M with
optimized joint design to decrease the dilution of weld metal. For the next order, welding
procedures should be optimized specially if we get pressurized tank car.
Ref 1: Steel Makers Catalog

Ref 2: ASME SA-612 Specification & AAR Appendix M 5.4, 5.5

Ref 3: Lincoln Electric Filler Metal Selector Guide

Ref 4: Lincoln 880M/L56 Certificate

Ref 5: Trenergy PQR on P1 Material

Ref 6: Chemical Analysis Test Report of Base Metal and Weld Metal

Ref 7: Factors Promote Hot Cracking and Solution

Ref 8: Metallurgy and mechanics of welding (UCS and solution to solidification cracking)

Ref 9: Grain size Report