EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION

All metals expand when heated, contract when cooled. Put a steel bar into a furnace and heat it up to a temperature of 500 C. It will get longer. Take it out and cool it. It will return to its original length. Further, if you can find a way to precisely measure the width of the bar while it is hot, and again while it is cold, you'll find that width also increased during the heating process. To put it another way, expansion and contraction are threedimensional. If the length of the bar increased one per cent, both dimensions of the cross-section increased one per cent. Now suppose that this steel bar, instead of being placed in a furnace so that it could expand in all directions, ismounted between two immovable objects, such as two five-ton blocks of granite, and then heated with a torch untilthe center of the bar reaches a temperature of 500 C.The granite blocks will effectively keep it from getting longeras it heats up.As a result, it will get fatter than it would had it been free to increase in length.In fact, if the bar isnow allowed to cool down to its original temperature, it may wind up a bit shorter than it was at the start, and also abit fatter. Let's try one more example to show what can happen if normal three-dimensional expansion or contraction is restrained. Take a steel rod exactly five feet long, and heat it up to 500 C or so with no restraint on its movement. Then, while it is hot, clamp the ends in some way so that the bar can't get shorter as it cools. Let it cool down. Then measure it. You'll find that it's a bit longer than five feet, and, somewhere along its length, a bit skinnier. These are key points to remember about expansion and contraction: First, that changes in dimension, if there is no restraint, will be of the same proportion in all directions. Second, that if restraining forces prevent a change in one dimension, changes in other dimensions will be greater, and often permanent. In welding operations, the three-dimensional forces of expansion and contraction are seldom unrestrained. Heating and cooling are usually more-or-less localized. You generally apply heat to an edge, not to the entire piece of metal. While the conductivity of the metal will carry heat away from the edge and back into the body of the part, the edge will reach a temperature of well over 1000 C (in the case of steel) while the metal only a few inches away from the edge may be heated only to 300 C. The cooler metal acts as a restraint to prevent uniform increase in dimensions of the hot section.When welding has been completed, and the metal is cooling, the cooler section actsas a restraint against uniform contraction of the metal in, or close to, the weld itself.Let's explore some of thepractical aspects of this problem.Expansion and Contraction in Sheet MetalIf we take a piece of sheet metal and rapidly heat it with a torch along one edge, that edge will get wavy, asillustrated, with exaggeration, in Fig.11-1.Why?Because the cooler metal away from the edge will not expand asmuch as the edge itself, which therefore can increase in length only by buckling a bit.If we then allow the piece tocool down, most of the buckling will disappear.However, if the edge is carefully measured before heating andafter cooling, it will be found that it has shortened a trifle.During the period of expansion, there was somethickening, or upsetting of the metal in the edge, in addition to the buckling.As a practical matter, the upsetting of the metal at the very edge, and the slight decrease in edge length, are oflittle significance.The buckling, however, can create major problems, with respect to both the welding operationand to the appearance or utility of the finished product.In production operations, when it is essential that thefinished weld be perfectly flat, the usual procedure (regardless of the welding process used) is to clamp the metalso firmly, and so close to the actual weld zone, that only upsetting can take place, with all other movement of thepieces completely restrained.We'll be talking more about that subject in Chapter 12.For another example of the effects of restrained expansion and contraction in sheet metal, look at Fig.11-2.Here apiece of sheet has been cut nearly in two by a slit.Then (as in A) spots along the edges of the slit are heated rapidly, with a torch.Not too much seems to happen.The cold part of the metal restricts any general expansion, sothat the forces tend merely to upset, or thicken the edges, at the spots most strongly heated.However, when thepiece is allowed to cool, the slit closes at its open end, and one end may even slide past the other, as indicated inB.The forces of contraction, rather than eliminating the upsetting that took place during the heating, haveshortened both sides of the slit, and the metal in the uncut end of the sheet has had sufficient elasticity to allow it toact as a hinge.The point we'd like to make is this: that what happens during the cooling period is seldom thereverse of what happens during the expansion period.
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Fig.11-2.Because of what may be termed the hinge effect, heating and cooling willtend to close the gap between parts unless some method is provided to prevent thatfrom happening.

Fig.11-1.When the edge of a piece of sheet steel is heated, expansion will cause thehot edge to warp or wave.(The effect shown here is much exaggerated).After cooling,however, the heated edge is likely to be a bit shorter than it was originally.

Expansion and Contraction in Welded Joints

In welding, we must consider both the expansion and contraction in the parts being welded together, and thecontraction which takes place, as it cools, in the metal actually melted during the operation.Usually, the latter is themore significant.The weld metal will always tend to shrink.In a simple V joint between two small pieces of steel,unrestrained, as illustrated in Fig.11-3, there will be both bending and shrinkage.If we clamp the two pieces firmlyto prevent bending, one of two things will result.Either the weld will crack, across the top, as it cools, or bendingwill occur (although to a more limited degree) as soon as the clamping force is released.In ordinary steels, whichhave a great deal of ductility, cracking will seldom occur, but some bending cannot be avoided.
Fig.11-3.Because there is more hot metalat the top of a single-V weld than at theroot, distortion is likely to occur when themetal cools.

Look now at Fig.11-4, which represents a simple fillet weld between two pieces of steel.Here we wind up with achange in the angle between the pieces and a bend in one of the pieces.If we now make a weld on the other side,the error in angle will be largely corrected after cooling, but the bend in the bottom piece will almost certainly beincreased.In both Figs.11-3 and 11-4, the effects produced by contraction have been exaggerated somewhat.As a practicalmatter, the amount of distortion will depend on several factors, including the skill of the operator and the speed withwhich he welds.Further, it should be evident that when we are dealing with two small pieces of steel, and cananticipate the amount of distortion likely to occur, we can take steps in advance to nullify the distortion.In thesimple V joint, we can start with the surfaces of two pieces at a slight angle, rather than in the same plane (that is,perfectly flat).In the case of the fillet joint, we can pre-bend the bottom piece along the line of the future joint, andposition the vertical piece at something other than a 90-deg.angle before we start the weld.
Fig.11-4.In tee or fillet welds, distortion similarto that shown here in exaggerated form willusually result

Let's look at a more practical example of how we can counteract the effect of weld contraction by anticipating it.Fig.11-5(A) represents a rather odd-shaped piece of steel which has cracked in the middle.We've opened up thecrack so that we can weld it properly.If we now make the weld and let it cool, the whole piece will be distorted, asindicated with exaggeration in sketch B. However, if before or during the welding operation, we heated the centersof both the other spans cherry red with heating torches, as indicated in sketch C, we could eliminate most or all ofthe final distortion.Another way to counterpart the distortion would be to place a jack parallel to the center spanbefore we started to weld, and operate the jack to increase the opening in the weld area, while distorting the rest ofthe unit.If, immediately after welding, we slacked off the jack, we might again wind up with a minimum of distortionin the completed job.In itself, Fig.11-5 isn'ta very practical example.But it illustrates a principle.Superimpose the outline of that part onthe outline of a huge cracked gear, as in Fig.12-6, and see how the principle might be applied to a real-life repairjob.If it is necessary to weld one of the spokes in this gear, you must be sure to preheat certain sections stronglybefore you weld, assuming it is not feasible to preheat the entire gear to a rather high temperature.If you don't,you'll wind up with a cracked weld (quite likely in this case), or a cracked gear, or an out-of-round gear.There areother ways to minimize or eliminate distortion.When two thick plates must be joined, weld from both sides (adouble-V joint) instead of from only one.In fillet welding, weld a little on one side, then a little on the other, then alittle more on the first, etc.

Fig.11-5.Use of heat to counteract distortiondue to weld contraction.If the crack shown in(A) is welded without preheating, the result willbe a warped part, as indicated in (8).But if theparallel sections are strongly preheated beforewelding starts, as indicated in (C), distortionshould be negligible.

Fig.11-6.Illustrating a way in which theprinciples sketched in Fig.12-5 might beapplied to welding a cracked spoke in alarge gear.

Residual Stress We said that the weld metal always tends to shrink.If the sections being joined are locked into a structure sosecurely that they cannot move during the welding period, or during the cooling-down period, what happens?Theweld metal stretches while it is cooling.Steel, at elevated temperatures, is quite ductile, so it can stretch quite a lot.(Cast iron, which is not very ductile, would probably crack.) Most of that stretch will represent permanentdeformation .But some of that stretch will take place within the elastic limit .It is stretch that would disappear ifthe structural forces restraining the welded joint should suddenly be released.In place of that theoretical stretch,we have a residual or locked-up stress.That sounds alarming.Don't let it worry you too much.Almost all weldedstructures contain residual stresses.Unless a residual stress in one section tends to reinforce the residual stress inanother section, it's not likely to cause trouble.When it seems necessary to get rid of residual stresses ofconsiderable magnitude, they can be largely eliminated by post-heating the entire assembly, or the weld zone, andallowing it to cool slowly.In modern welding practice, residual stresses are often minimized by using multi-pass instead of single-passwelds in heavy sections.Each pass eliminates or reduces the residual stress created by previous passes. Coefficient of Thermal Expansion All metals expand when heated, but not to the same degree.The measure of expansion is termed thecoefficientof thermal expansion.Most steels have a coefficient of about 0.000011 per degree Celsius.In metric terms, thatmeans that an unrestrained steel bar, one meter long, will increase in length 11 millionths of a meter, or 11thousandths of a millimeter, for each 1 degree C rise in temperature.A temperature rise of 1000 C will cause aone-meter bar to increase 11 mm in length.In English measure, you can calculate that a one-footsteel bar willincrease in length about Ys inch when heated 1000 C.
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Thermal Conductivity
Some metals are much better conductors of heat than others.The thermal conductivity of copper is eight timesthat of carbon steel; some stainless steels have only one-fourth the conductivity of carbon steel.In practical terms,this means that if you weld copper, the metal four inches away from the weld zone will get much hotter than itwould if the material were carbon steel.If you weld stainless steel, the metal four inches from the weld zone will notget as hot as it would if the material were carbon steel.Since the degree of expansion, or internal stress createdwhen expansion is restrained, depends on temperature rise, thermal conductivity has a very real bearing on theexpansion-contraction problem.The differences between steel, copper, and aluminum need not concern the oxy-acetylene welder greatly, since he is likely to weld carbon steels most of the time, and all carbon steels have aboutthe same coefficient of expansion and about the same rate of heat conductivity.However, the variation

betweendifferent metals with respect to these two temperature-related properties, and the substantial differences betweenmetals in their strength at elevated temperatures, are matters of considerable significance to the welding engineer,especially in the design of fixtures for mechanized welding.
Fig.11-7.Here is a simple jig which can be constructed frompieces of steel plate and several C-clamps to permit making eithera butt weld or a flange weld in sheet steel without undesirabledistortion.Note the groove in the bottom plate, provided toeliminate the possibility of welding the sheet metal to the jig, Witha jig like this, there is no need to make tack welds, or to provideextra space between the parts at the finishing end of the seam,both of which must be done when unjigged pieces are to bewelded (as directed in Chapter 14, which follows.)