TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 27/1976
By J G Garland and N Bailey
Background
The resistance to solidification cracking during the submerged arc welding of eight commercial steels has been assessed by means of the Transvarestraint test using (a) the same welding consumables and conditions as were used to develop equations predicting cracking behaviour from composition and (b) typical consumables used in practice, again at the same welding conditions as in the earlier experiments.
With the same consumables as in the statistically designed experiments, good agreement was obtained with predicted cracking behaviour while the presence of some additional elements (0.11%V, 0.04% rare earth metals or 0.5%Cr + 0.3%Cu) in the plate did not noticeably affect cracking behaviour. Using different consumables, welds made with fluxes giving higher oxygen contents than the standard flux (0.045%) cracked less than predicted; welds with lower oxygen contents cracked slightly more.