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3 Materials a n d Structures 38 (April 2005) 353-357

Effect of normalizing heat treatment on the mechanical

behaviour of low-alloy steel weld metals

V. B. Trindade l, J. C. Paygo-Filho l, A. S. Guimar~es 1 and R. P. R. Paranhos 2

(1) Programa de Engenharia Metalfirgica e de Materiais, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ),
Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil
(2) Laboratdrio de Materiais Avangados, Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), Campos dos Goytacazes
(RJ), Brazil
Received: 5 January 2004," accepted 29 September 2004

ABSTRACT
In equipment manufacturing there are occasions when the base metal need to be hot or cold worked prior to welding. After welding, the
components have to be submitted to a normalizing heat treatment in order to recover the original mechanical properties. In this work, low alloy steel
weld metals have been studied in the as-welded condition and after normalizing heat treatment. It was observed a high decrease of the tensile
properties after normalizing. The toughness increases after normalizing heat treatment, except for one weld metal where a great content of
martensite-austenite-bainite constituent was formed.
1359-5997 9 2004 RILEM. All rights reserved.

RI~SUMI~
Darts la fabrication d'~quipements, il y a des moments oil le mdtal non pr~cieux a besoin d~tre travailld d chaud ou glfroM avant soudage. Aprbs
saudage, les composants doivent Otre soumis gl un traitement thermique de normalisation afin de rOcupdrer les propridtds m~caniques originales. Dans
ce travail, des aciers faiblement allids par soudure ont dt~ dtudids pour les bruts de soudage et aprbs normalisation du traitement thermique. On a
observO une forte diminution des propriOtds de tension aprbs normalisation. La rigiditO augmente aprbs normalisation du traitement thermique, sauf
pour un mdtal de soudure oir est apparue une importante teneur en martens#e, austOnite et bainite.

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N The manufacturing of equipments by welding usually

The weld metal metallurgy for CMn and low alloy steels
differs significantly from the base metal metallurgy in
several aspects: heating and cooling rates of a weld are
much more faster than submitted to a steel base metal
during its manufacturing process; the microstructure of the
weld metal is columnar and as melted, and not submitted to
any subsequent thermo-mechanical treatment; weld metal
carbon content is usually kept below 0.10%, while CMn
and low alloy structural steels have 0.12%C-0.25%C; it is
observed that CMn and low alloy steel weld metal
microstructure is a complex mixture of two or more
constituents (proeutectoide ferrite, polygonal ferrite,
aligned and non-aligned side plate ferrite, ferrite-carbide
aggregate and acicular ferrite) [1]. When alloying elements
are added to the weld metal, upper and lower bainite,
martensite and the A - M (austenite with martensite)
microconstituent may be formed [2, 3]; tensile properties of
the weld metal is relatively high when compared to a base
metal of similar chemical composition.
require cold conformation of steel plates and for few cases
hot forging in order that plates acquire specific shapes.
When working with thick plates, welding generates a high
level of residual stresses, and it is usual to perform a stress
relieve heat treatment after welding. This is always done at
temperatures between 600~176 well below Acl, and
then it does not change significantly the microstructure and
mechanical properties of both base metal and weld metal.
For some few cases, when the steel is submitted to a high
degree of cold working or when the steel is hot worked, it is
necessary a normalizing heat treatment in order to recover
the original mechanical properties of the base metal. Due
normalizing involves heating above Ac3 in order to promote
ferrite recritalization on the base metal, this will change the
original characteristics of an as welded structure.
The effect of the normalizing heat treatment on the weld
metal has not been yet well studied on the literature. So, the
present work has as objective to evaluate changes at
microstructure and mechanical properties of CMn and low
alloy steel weld metals after normalizing heat treatment.

1359-5997 9 2004 RILEM. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1617/14177
354 V.B. Trindade et aL /Materials and Structures 38 (2005) 353-357

2. E X P E R I M E N T A L Table 1 - Chemical composition and carbon equivalent (CE) of the weld metals
PROCEDURE Chemical composition (wt. %)
Weld metal S Mo Cr Ti B CE
C Mn Si P
Weld metal joints were
obtained with submerged- CMn 0.08 1.63 0.40 0.022 0.015 . . . . . . . . . 0.29
arc welding, and the CMnMo 0.05 1.70 0.23 0.024 0.021 0.50 . . . . . . . 0.42
adopted welding procedure CMnMoTiB 0.08 1.58 0.31 0.021 0.016 0.48. - - 0.012 0.0018 0.44
was according to AWS CMnMoCr 0.05 1.25 0.32 0.024 0.015 0.52 1.06 0.52
A.5.23-97. As consumables,
CE = %C + %Si/24 + %Mn/6 + %Cu/t5 + %Ni/40 + %Cr/6 + %Mo/4 + (%Nb + %V)/5 + 10%B
it was used a neutral flux
and four different wires:
CMn (1.2%Mn), CMnMo (1.7%Mn, 0.5%Mo), Table 2 - Results of the quantitative metallography on weld metals
CMnMoCr (0.5%Mn, 0.5%Mo, 1.3%Cr) and for the as welded condition, where AF = acicular ferrite, PF(G) =
CMnMoTiB (1.2%Mn, 0.5%Mo, 0.16%Ti, proeutectoide ferrite, PF(I) -- polygonal ferrite, FS(A) = aligned side
0.010%B). plate ferrite, FC = ferrite-carbide aggregate; and weld metal ferrite
The normalizing heat treatment was made grain size (GS) after the normalizing heat,treatment
heating the welding joints at a rate of 200~ Constituent content I%] GS
from ambient temperature up to 920~ holding Weld metal
AF PF(G) PF(I) FS(A) FC ~tm ASTM
at this temperature for 2h. Afterward, the
welding joints were removed from the furnace CMn 25 32 14 27 2 20 8
and cooled in air. CMnMo 42 17 19 20 2 23 8
Quantitative metallography was carried out
CMnMoTiB 76 12 5 5 2 25 7
using optical microscopy taking into account a
high statistic accuracy according to [4]. IIW- CMnMoCr 44 9 8 36 3 23 8
382-71 was used to identify and classify weld
metal microstructure. For the normalized condition the
average ferrite grain size was measured by the intercept
method. The ASTM number was calculated according to
Voort equation [4]. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
was used in order to analyse microphases in weld metals in
both conditions, as-welded (AW) and after normalizing
heat treatment (N).
Mechanical testing (tensile and Charpy V) were
performed for both as-welded and normalized condition.
The Charpy V impact testing was performed at three
different temperatures (-20~ 0~ and +30~

3. R E S U L T S AND DISCUSION

3.1 As-welded microstructure

Table 1 shows the chemical composition and the carbon
equivalent for the four weld metal joints. Carbon,
manganese, silicon, phosphor and sulphur contents are
considered to be relatively constant for the range studied.
The effect of alloying additions on the weld metal
microstmcture can be seen with the quantitative metallografic
results shown in Table 2. The CMn weld metal showed a great
content of proeutectoid boundary ferrite (32%), 14%
polygonal ferrite, 27% aligned side plate ferrite and only 25%
of acicular ferrite. A typical photomicrograph of these weld
metal constituents is shown in Fig. 1. The addition of
0.50%Mo (CMnMo weld metal) promoted the increase in
acicular ferrite to 42% and polygonal ferrite to t9%, while the
others ferrite morphology types were significantly reduced
(except for FC), showing the effect of Mo promoting a
microstmcture refinement. The addition of Ti-B (CMnMoTiB
weld metal) promoted an additional increase of acicular ferrite
content to 76%, showing the strong effect of Ti and B addition
Fig. 1 - Optical micrograph of the CMn weld metal in the as-
welded condition showing acicular ferrite (AF), proeutectoide
ferrite (PF(G)), polygonal ferrite (PF(I)) and aligned side plate
ferrite (FS(A)).
on microstmcture refinement. The ability of B to promote
acicular ferrite is well known [5] to be dependent of Ti
presence, which combines with both C and N of the weld
metal, releasing B to segregate at austenite grain boundary, and
than reducing the austenite-ferrite transformation temperature.
The effect of 1.06%Cr addition can be observed comparing
CMnMoCr with CMnMo weld metal. Although acicular
ferrite content of these weld metals are almost the same (44%
and 42% respectively, see Table 2) it can be observed the
effect of Cr increasing aligned side plate ferrite and reducing
polygonal and proeutectoid ferrite. This is also attributed to the
higher Mn content of CMnMo weld metal (Table 1), because
Mn is considered to be more effective than Cr to reduce the
austenite-ferrite temperature transformation.
 V.B. Trindade et aL / Materials and Structures 38 (2005) 353-357 355

Fig. 3 - Optical micrograph of the CMnMo weld metal after the

normalizing heat treatment showing equiaxial felTitegrains and
ferrite-carbide aggregate.

Fig. 2 - Scanning electron micrograph of the weld metal

CMnMoTiB in the as-welded condition showing the A-M
(austenite-martensite) microconstituent.

For all weld metals, the amount of ferrite-carbide

aggregate remained in the range of 2%-3%. In fact, optical
metallography does not have enough resolution to correctly
identify microconstituents of the weld metal, and this
becomes clear only with the aid of SEM analysis. SEM
analysis showed that CMn weld metal has only ferrite-
carbide as microconstituent. For all others three weld
metals the A-M microconstituent was identified, as shown
in Fig. 2. A qualitative analysis showed more quantity of A-
M microconstituent for the CMnMoCr weld metal,
followed by CMnMoTiB and CMnMo weld metal. It is
known [6] the harmful effect of the A-M microconstituent
on weld metal toughness. (a)

3.2 Normalized microstructure

For the weld metals studied, the original as-welded
microstructures (Fig. 1) was changed to an equiaxed ferrite
microstructure with ferrite-carbide aggregates. Fig. 3 shows
a typical optical microstructure of the CMnMo weld metal
after the normalizing heat treatment. The complete
anstenitization of the weld metal imposed by the
normalizing heat treatment, associated with its significantly
lower thermal cycles when compared with the welding
thermal cycles, generates a coarser equiaxed ferrite when
compared to the as welded microstructure rich in acicular
ferrite. The grain size of the normalized equiaxed ferrite is
shown in Table 2. It can be observed that the grain size of
equiaxed ferrite is kept relatively constant for all weld
metals, with 20gm for the CMn weld metal and 231.tin -
251.tm for the three low-alloyed weld metals.
SEM was used to identify ferrite-carbide aggregates
observed by optical microscopy after weld metal (b)
normalization. For the CMn weld metal, perlite and
Fig. 4 - Scanning electronmicrographof normalizedweld metals
cementite film at the equiaxed grain boundary ferrite was showing (a) perlite and cementitefilm at ferrite grain boundary
obtained (Fig. 4a). For the low alloy weld metals, Fig. 4b (CMn weld metal), and (b) M-A-B (CMnMoTiBweld metal).
356 V.B. Trindade et al. / Materials' and Structures 38 (2005) 353-357

shows an aggregate consisting of three constituents: Table 3 - Mechanical properties of the weld metals in the
martensite, retained austenite and bainite. This was also as-welded and normalized conditions, where YS = yield
observed by Evans [7], who called it as M-A-B constituent. strength in MPa, UTS = ultimate tensile strength in MPa,
El. = elongation (%) and RA = reduction of area (%);
3.3 M e c h a n i c a l properties and Vickers microhardness (HV 0.1)
Mechanical properties
3.3.1 Vickers hardness
Weld metal YS UTS El. RA HV 0.1
Table 3 shows weld metals Vickers hardness for the as
welded and normalized conditions. For the as welded As-welded
condition, hardness was 170 HV 0.1 for the CMn weld CMn 434 585 30 72 170
metal and 180 HV 0 . 1 - 198 HV 0.1 for the low alloyed CMnMo 500 605 25 66 194
weld metals. After normalizing, CMn weld metal was the CMnMoTiB 545 620 27 63 180
only weld metal which experienced a significant drop in CMnMoCr 565 685 24 58 198
hardness (51 HV 0.1), while for the low alloyed weld Normalized
metals hardness remained almost with the same values as CMn 305 448 38 74 119
the as-welded condition. This is attributed to the solid CMnMo 244 472 36 70 186
solution strengthening due to the addition of alloying CMnMoTiB 241 454 36 74 179
elements (Mo, Cr, Ti and B) and the formation of M-A-B CMnMoCr 248 510 33 61 205
constituent at the low alloyed weld metals.

3.3.2 Tensile properties 300

(AW) . . . . (N)' ' '
Table 3 shows the mechanical properties for the four --ll-- CMn [] CMn
250- 0-- CMnMo O-- CMnMo
weld metals in the as-welded and normalized conditions.
For the as-welded condition, yield and tensile strength --&-- CMnMoTiB --A-- CMnMoTiB / Z X
200- --V-- CMnMoCr --V ~ l : l
increase in the following order: CMn, CMnMo,
CMnMoTiB and CMnMoCr. These results are consistent 150 -
with the degree of alloying addition in the weld metals
(which can be measured by the carbon equivalent values 100-
shown in table 1) and the associated solid solution
strengthening. In addition, low alloyed weld metals have a 50-
higher content of fine acicular ferrite, which has a high ~ V~ v
dislocation density and high angle grain boundary.
0
Elongation and reduction of area, as expected, showed -i0 ; 1'0 2'0 3'0
opposite behaviour, i.e., have been reduced while carbon
T e m p e r a t u r e [~
equivalent has increased.
For the normalized condition, table 3 shows a Fig. 5 - Charpy V energy of the weld metals in the as-welded
remarkable drop in yield strength when compared to the as- (AW) and normalized (N) conditions for three different
welded condition, although the tensile strength also has temperatures (-20~ 0~ and +30~
decreased for all weld metals. This is attributed to the
austenitization and low cooling rates characteristic of the although in the present work CMn weld metal showed the
normalizing heat treatment, producing a matrix of coarse lowest content of acicular ferrite among all weld metals
equiaxial ferrite. It is known that the as-welded metal and studied (Table 2) and the greater values of impact
acicular ferrite have a high dislocation density which toughness. The lower toughness of the low alloy weld
combined with the small grain size of the acicular ferrite metals is attributed to the presence of A-M
produces a considerable high yield and tensile strength. microconstituent on the as-welded microstructure, as
Elongation and reduction of area, as expected, showed mentioned earlier, and to its harmful effect on the
opposite behaviour, i.e., have been increased while yield toughness of the weld metal.
and tensile strength have reduced. For the weld metals in the normalized condition, Fig. 5
shows that Charpy V energy at -20~ is higher for the CMn
3.3.3 Charpy V toughness weld metal, followed by CMnMo, CMnMoTiB and
Fig. 5 shows Charpy V results for the weld metals in the CMnMoCr. The last two weld metals present results below
as-welded and normalized conditions. For the as-welded the threshold of 27 J, limiting its use for the normalized
condition, Charpy V energy at -20~ is higher for CMn condition. The low toughness values are attributed to the
weld metal, followed by CMnMoTiB, CMnMo and presence of M-A-B constituent observed for the three low
CMnMoCr. Only this last one presents results near the alloyed weld metals which, similar to the A-M constituent
minimum threshold of 27 J usually required for pressure observed in the as-welded condition, is considered to be
vessel manufacturing. It is known in the literature the harmful to toughness.
beneficial effect of acicular ferrite on toughness [6], The results obtained in the present work allow to choose
welding consumables for both the as-welded and after
 V.B. Trindade et al. / Materials and Structures 38 (2005) 353-357
normalising condition. It is supposed that steels used for
pressure vessel manufacturing usually have 470 MPa
minimum tensile strength and impact toughness greater
than 27 J at -20~ In this case, for the as-welded condition,
CMn wire is considered as the better choice. For the
normalized condition, CMnMo weld metal is considered to
obtain the better compromise between toughness at -20~
and tensile strength. Despite it, attention should be given to
the low yield strength obtained for all weld metals, because
for many engineering purposes yield strength is the
required property used in the design of equipments.
4. CONCLUSIONS
From this work it is possible to draw the following
conclusions when evaluating the effect of normalizing heat
treatment on weld metal properties:
1. the original as-welded metal, fine-grained
microstructure is changed to a coarse-equiaxed ferrite
with ferrite-carbide aggregates;
2. yield and tensile strength properties are considerable
reduced;
3. low-alloyed weld metal (CMnMo, CMnMoTiB and
CMnMoCr) developed M-A-B constituent, which
impaired toughness at low temperatures;
4. CMnMo weld metal presented the best compromise
between tensile strength and toughness at low
temperature.
357
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FAPERJ, CAPES and CARBOOX are gratefully
acknowledged for financial support.
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