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8 R. Weck (Discussion Meeting)

fracture has been produced in deeply notched unwelded thick steel plate. This
is not to say that residual stresses can be entirely disregarded, but their con-
tribution can now be more readily understood. The same mechanism of plastic
deformation during welding and cooling that will give rise to residual stresses also
produces strain damage at the root of a pre-existing defect. Both the strain
damage and the residual stresses, at least in mild steel, can be eliminated by heat
treatment.
In a damaged or strain-hardened region at the root of a pre-existing crack
stresses due to loads imposed in service will be simply superimposed on the exist-
ing residual stresses so that fracture will be initiated at lower loads than would
be expected were there no residual stress present.

THE EFFECT OF WELDING ON STRUCTURAL FAILURE

The use of welding in fabrication is responsible for a number of effects which

may have more or less serious repercussions on structural failure singly or in
combination.

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(a) Residual stresses
All welding processes introduce residual stresses. These can neither be calculated,
Cw.. nor, if they could, is there any way of avoiding their occurrence. Any welded
L,U
L,U
0 structure will have residual stresses equal at least to the yield point of the material.
u These stresses will increase plastic deformation (deflexion) under load, reduce-in
some cases drastically-the buckling load, they may cause creep and they may be
0 sufficient without any additional stresses to cause stress corrosion. Their effect
~
Q. on fatigue failure is negligible except in as far as residual compression stresses at
points of stress concentration enhance fatigue strength.

(b) Defects
A variety of defects may be introduced by welding. Some such as porosity and
slag inclusions, are relatively innocuous. Lack of fusion, lack of penetration and
cracks in particular will reduce fatigue resistance and may be instrumental in
promoting brittle fracture.
(c) Metallurgical effects
The weld and the heat-affected zone present a continuous series of different
materials in relation to which the application of a permissible stress based on the
yield point of unwelded parent metal seems nonsensical. Hardening due to trans-
formation and precipitation singly or combined with the diffusion of hydrogen
may promote many different forms of cracking. The resistance to fatigue, creep
and stress corrosion may be enhanced or impaired as the result of the thermal cycle
to differing degrees at different distances from the weld centre line. Some of our
most common low-alloy structural steels will develop a heat-affected zone with
considerably impaired notch ductility so that cracks whose ends lie in the heat-
affected zone will propagate particularly readily as low stress fractures.
Hot cracks may occur in the weld metal, but they may also occur in the parent
plate at the edge of a weld bead if some surface scale that may be rich in sulphur