Fracture behavior of various welded steels

In this study, P295GH (17Mn4) pressure vessel steel and AISI 304 stainless steel were joined by using ER 309L electrodes. Welded specimens were fatigued by four point bending experiments. Cracks occurred on the stainless steel side of the weldment during the fatigue tests. Finite element (FE) analyses were conducted by fixing 2-D precracked model for welded 17Mn4 pressure vessel steel and AISI 304 stainless steel by using ER 309L electrodes. True stress and true strain values of the AISI 304, 17Mn4 steels and ER 309L electrodes were determined by tensile tests. Stress analyses were conducted after entering the linear and nonlinear properties of the materials into software manually. Eventually, fracture mechanics analyses were conducted for the model, and J integral fracture toughness values of the crack on the weldment were calculated.