Study on welding thermal cycle and residual stress of UNS S32304 duplex stainless steel selected as external shield for a transport packaging of Mo-99

Abstract

Thin plates of duplex stainless steel UNS S32304 were welded using the pulsed gas tungsten arc GTAW process (butt joint) without filler addition. The used shielding gas was pure argon and 98% argon plus 2% of nitrogen. The thermal cycles were acquired during welding, in regions near the melting pool. This alloy is candidate for the external clad of a cask for the transport of high activity radiopharmaceuticals substances. For the residual stress measurements in austenite phase an X-ray diffractometer was used in a Bragg-Brentano geometry with CuKα radiation (λ= 0.154 nm) and for ferrite phase was used a pseudo-parallel geometry with CrKα radiation (λ= 0.2291nm). The results of residual stress using sin2y methodology shown that the influence of the high welding temperature leads to compressive stresses for both phase of the duplex steels mainly in heat-affected zone. It was observed a high temperature peak and an increase of the mean residual stress after addition of nitrogen to the argon shielding gas.