On the Ductility and Hardness in the Weld Heat-Affected Zone of High Strength Steels

Abstract

Correlation between weld HAZ ductility and hardness were conducted for twelve high strength steels by means of a Kommerell bead-bend test. The critical values of HAZ hardness at which HAZ ductility becomes unsatisfactory were determined for each steel. These values differ not a little from steel to steel, and were concluded to be very important as a criterion of survice performance of high strength steel weldments. Furthermore, these critical values were found to be closely related to those obtained from "the synthetic HAZ ductility test" newly introduced by authors.