Effects of ferrite content and concentrations of carbon and silicon on weld solidification cracking susceptibility of stainless steels

Abstract

In the welding of austenitic stainless steels, the formation of approximately 5% δ-ferrite phase is often used to decrease the susceptibility to solidification cracking. The partition coefficients of impurity elements such as phosphorous and sulfur of the ferrite phase are high, which expand the temperature range of solidification. At the same time, it is well known that the solidification cracking susceptibility increases with increasing δ-ferrite content above 20%. Thus, high δ-ferrite content increases the solidification cracking susceptibility, even though the δ-ferrite phase has high solubility of the impurity elements. The aim of this work was to investigate the effects of the δ-ferrite content and the concentration of carbon and silicon on the solidification crack susceptibility of Fe–18%Cr stainless steel with various nickel concentrations. The ferrite content was controlled by adding various amounts of nickel. The brittle temperature range (BTR) hardly changed with increasing δ-ferrite content, regardless of the type and concentrations of carbon and silicon. Therefore, the effect of the ferrite content on solidification cracking susceptibility must be small. In addition, the BTR increased with the concentrations of carbon and silicon. The specimens containing higher concentrations of carbon exhibited higher BTRs than those containing silicon. It is considered that the solidification segregation corresponding to the partition coefficient of carbon to the δ-ferrite phase induces an increase in cracking susceptibility. In addition, the formation of austenite during solidification reduces cracking susceptibility owing to the higher solubility of carbon.