Characteristics of Inconel 718 Filler Metal Affecting to Welding Metal Zones of Cast Steel for Piston Crown Material

Abstract

Since the oil price has been significantly jumped for recent some years, the diesel engine of the merchant ship has been mainly used the heavy oil of low quality. Thus, it has been often exposed to severely corrosive environment more and more because temperature of the exhaust gas of a combustion chamber is getting higher and higher with increasing of using the heavy oil of low quality. As a result, wear and corrosion of the most parts surrounded with combustion chamber is more serious compared to the other parts of the engine. Therefore, an optimum repair welding for these parts is very important to prolong their lifetime in a economical point of view. In this study, Inconel 718 filler metal was welded with GTAW method in the cast steel which would be generally used with piston crown material. And the corrosion properties of weld metal zone, heat affected zone and base metal zone were investigated using electrochemical methods such as measurement of corrosion potential, anodic polarization curves, cyclic voltammogram and impedance etc. in 35% H2SO4 solution. The weld metal and base metal zones exhibited the highest and lowest values of hardness respectively. Furthermore, the corrosion current density of the weld metal zone indicated the lowest value, having the highest value of hardness. The corrosive products with red color was more or less observed in the base metal zone, while the weld metal zone exhibited the general corrosion without corrosive products of red color. The microstructure of the pearlite with black color was predominantly observed in the base metal zone, however, the microstructure of ferrite with white color increased increasingly in the heat affected zone, and the microstructure of ferrite with white color was significantly observed in the weld metal zone. In particular, the polarization characteristics such as impedance, polarization curve and cyclic voltammogran associated with corrosion resistance property were well in good agreement with each other. Keywords : Repair welding, Inconel 718 filler metal, GTAW, Weld metal zone, Electrochemical method, Corrosion current density, Hardness. Microstructure