Fracture toughness of a welded super duplex stainless steel

Fracture toughness testing was conducted on standard single-edge notched bend bar specimens of base and weld metal. The material was the SAF 2906 super duplex stainless steel. The aim was to evaluate the susceptibility for brittle failure at sub-zero temperatures for the base and weld metal. The base metal was tested between −103 and −60 °C and was evaluated according to the crack-tip opening displacement method. The fracture event at and below −80 °C can be described as ductile until critical cleavage initiation occurs, which caused unstable failure of the specimen. The welding method used was submerged arc welding with a 7 wt% nickel filler metal. The welded specimens were post-weld heat treated (PWHT) at 1100 °C for 20 min and then quenched. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis showed that during PWHT substitutional element partitioning occurred which resulted in decreased nickel content in the ferrite. The PWHT weld metal specimens were tested at −72 °C. The fracture sequence was critical cleavage fracture initiation after minor crack-tip blunting and ductile fracture.