Journal of Pressure Equipment and Systems 6 (2008) 21-24

Relief of tensile residual stress in girth joint of AISI 316 steel by deep cryogenic treatment
Qiongqi Wang, Weize Wang, Fu-Zhen Xuan, Zhengdong Wang, Shan-Tung Tu *
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East China University of science and technology, Shanghai 200237, China

Abstract Although it has been reported that deep cryogenic treatment can improve the wear and fatigue resistance of some metals and alloys, less work was done to investigate the effect of such processing on weld joint of austenitic stainless steels. In this study, phase transformation of 316 austenitic stainless steels was studied by the magnetic measurement before and after deep cryogenic treatment, and residual stress in fusion zone and heat-affected zone of girth joint of AISI 316 stainless steel was measured by the electric discharge cutting and static state strain gauge after deep cryogenic treatment. The results indicated that the deep cryogenic treatment can greatly alleviate tensile residual stress of girth joint of austenitic stainless steels greatly. Some plastic deformation resulted from thermal stress under rapid cooling-down and warming-up during the deep cryogenic treatment process is responsible for the relaxation of welding residual stress. Moreover, welding residual stress can be further relaxed if martensite transformation occurs. Keywords: Girth joint; Austenitic stainless steel; Deep cryogenic treatment; Residual stress.

1. Introduction Deep cryogenic treatment is the method of materials at extremely low temperatures, which is defined as liquid nitrogen temperature (-196) or a temperature easily obtained with liquid nitrogen temperature through control system. Improvement of a wide range of properties for tool steel and die steel has been reported through deep cryogenic treatment, such as wear resistance [], hardness [3] and fatigue [4] over the past few decades. Deep cryogenic process has been adopted by a number of aerospace, automotive and electronic industries [5]. However, only less work has been done to study the effect of deep cryogenic treatment on austenitic stainless steels such as AISI 304 and AISI 316 [6, 7], which have good corrosion resistance, weldability and relatively low yield strength. The tensile residual stresses in the fusion zone and heat-affected zone along welding direction of austenitic stainless steel may be up to yield strength [8, 9], which are likely to have a major influence on the overall structural integrity and service life. Relief of residual stress of some aluminum alloys by cryogenic treatment has been reported previously [10-13]. However, there are many inconsistencies in the effect of deep cryogenic treatment on the stress relief. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effect of deep cryogenic treatment on residual stress of austenite stainless steel. In this study, residual stress distribution in fusion zone and heat-affected zone of girth joint of AISI 316 stainless steel after deep cryogenic treatment was
*

measured. The effect of thermal stress and phase transformation on residual stress distribution was discussed. 2. Experimental 2.1. Material A mill-annealed pipe containing girth joint of 316 austenitic stainless steel was used in this study, the dimension of which is 273mm11mm400mm. Material and its welding were provided by Siopec Zhenhai RefiningChemical Company Limited of China. Single-Vee butt-welded joints were prepared using automotive gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process, with argon shielding gas. Great care was taken to obtain the best possible joint alignment. Welds were tested by X-ray radiography for their soundness. The chemical composition of the pipe is shown in Table 1. 2.2. Deep cryogenic treatment process A complete cryogenic process should include cooling, holding, heating-up, tempering treatment and the times of cryogenic treatment. For the brittle metals, the residual stress induced by over quick cooling rate can cause the distortion or/and damage of the components. However, rapid cooling and warming nearly have no harmful effect on austenitic stainless steel which has excellent toughness. The selected cryogenic process in this study is putting the welded pipe into liquid nitrogen, holding for 12 hours and warming up to ambient temperature. The cryogenic process was repeated two times to investigate the effect of thermal stress and martensite transformation on welding residual stress.

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sttu@ecust.edu.cn (Shan-Tung Tu).

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Qiongqi Wang et al. / Relief of tensile residual stress in girth joint of AISI 316 steel

Material Base metal Weld metal

C 0.05 0.05

Table 1. Chemical composition of the 316 stainless steel pipe (wt%). Si Mn Ni Cr S 0.56 1.73 12.87 17.77 0.010 0.62 1.33 13.32 16.95 0.013

P 0.029 0.028

Mo 2.15 2.30

is investigating the effect of deep cryogenic treatment on welding residual stress and its mechanism. 3. Results and discussions Ferromagnetic measurements at different regions of the 316 pipe shows that magnetic performance has no change before and after deep cryogenic treatment. Similarly, martensite transformation is not found by XRD analysis ,shown in Fig. 2. So, the effect of martensite transformation on welded residual stress can be neglected. Microstructure of fusion zone before and after deep cryogenic treatment is shown in Fig. 3, in which microstructure change is not found. Residual stress distribution in fusion zone and heat affected zone along welding direction for 316 stainless steel pipe after deep cryogenic treatment is shown in Fig. 4. The maximum tensile residual stress appear at weld center line along welding direction and the magnitude is 58MPa, much less than The corresponding maximum stress value of FEM analysis of 260MPa, from reference [14] for 316 stainless steel pipe before deep cryogenic treatment (close to yield strength of 316 austenitic stainless steel).

Fig. 1. Arrangement of strain gauges.

Fig. 2. The results of XRD after deep cryogenic treatment.

2.3. Ferrite content measurement 316 austenitic stainless steel at liquid nitrogen temperature is metastable, which is similar to 304 austenitic stainless steel at room temperature. However, there still are some phase changes from austenite to martensite for 316 austenitic stainless steel during cryogenic process. Martensite transformation appears for 316 austenitic stainless steel during deep cryogenic process, which makes materials take on some magnetic performance. Degree of martensite transformation can be basically reflected by change of ferromagnetic performance before and after deep cryogenic treatment, which was determined by FISCHER FERITSCOPE MP30 (the scope of measuring 0.180%) and XRD analysis. 2.4. Residual stress determination The width of weld zone is nearly 15 mm and the visible width of heat-affected zone is about 10 mm. Residual stress in weld zone and heat-affected zone of 316 austenitic stainless steel pipe after deep cryogenic treatment was measured by the electric discharge marching and static state strain gauge computer-controlled. Arrangement of strain gauges was shown in Fig. 1. Only the residual stress along welding direction was measured because the objective of this study

(a) Non-cryogenic treated.

(b) Cryogenic treated. Fig. 3. Metallographs of 316SS welded joint.

Journal of Pressure Equipment and Systems 6 (2008) 21-24

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60 Stress/MPa 40 20 0 -20 -10 0 Distance/mm 10 20

Fig. 4. Residual stress of welded joint after deep cryogenic treatment.

It is well known that the transformation of FCC austenite to BCC martensite yields 4% volume expansion [15], which will relieve the tensile residual stress in materials. Several works have been done about the effect of phase transformation on welded residual stress [16-18]. The results showed that welded residual stress is evidently relaxed by controlling the temperature and the amount of phase transformation. For 304 stainless steel, welded residual stress changes from 60 70MPa to -10 -15MPa after deep cryogenic treatment martensite, in which the amount of marteniste transformation is about 3% [7]. However, in this study no magnetic change and maretnisite transformation was found in the fusion zone and heat-affected zone of the 316 pipe after deep cryogenic treatment. Consequently it can be confirmed that martensite transformation is not the basic reason for relief of welding residual stress. Temperature difference between inner and outer surface and middle thickness is about 200 during the rapid cooling and warming process in cryogenic treatment, which produces more than 500MPa thermal stress (the temperature difference is 200, the mean expansion coefficient is 13.010-6 1/, Youngs modulus is 195GPa, the estimated thermal stress is 507MPa). As far as austenitic stainless steel is concerned, yield strength increases slowly with temperature decreasing. When temperature is cooling down from room temperature to liquid nitrogen temperature, yield strength of 304 austenitic stainless increases from about 250MPa to 400MPa. Similarly, yield strength of 316 austenitic stainless changes from about 250MPa to 500MPa. Correspondingly, tensile yield appear at the inner and outer surface because of bearing superimposed tensile stress, and compression yield occurs simultaneously at the middle thickness due to rather large compression stress initially. Accordingly, compression stress appears at the inner and outer surface and tensile stress happens at the middle thickness in virtue of shrinkage of middle material during the rapid cooling process. At the same time, reverse stress state exists in the material during the rapid warming process. Plastic deformation induces certainly stress redistribu-

tion in fusion zone and heat-affected zone, thereby welding residual stress is relieved. The mechanism of residual stress relief by deep cryogenic treatment needs adequate tensile plastic deformation through thermal stress and welding residual stress. Thus, thermal stress superimposed with welding residual stress results in plastic flow of the above materials. On the other hand, the effect of rapid cooling and warming is corresponding to thermal fatigue during which welding residual stress acts as mean stress. A few cycles for low cycle fatigue can make mean stress decrease quickly according to the fatigue testing results of T. H. Myeong etc [4]. Usually, the yield strength and the welded residual stress for a special material can not be changed basically after welding. The effect of relieving residual stress will mainly depend on thermal stress resulted from deep cryogenic treatment process. The stress relief will be more remarkable with temperature difference increasing. Uphill quenching process were adopted to relieve residual stress of aluminum alloy forging in reference [10], the stress relief obtained in this treatment reached a level of 58%higher than that of the traditional treatment by quenching in boiling water [12]. So further study need be done in order to obtain the best effect. 4. Conclusion Deep cryogenic treatment can relieve markedly welding tensile residual stress in fusion zone and heat-affected zone of austenitic stainless steels through rapid cooling-down and warming-up Plastic flow resulted from thermal stress superimposed with welding residual stress is responsible for the relieving residual stress. Acknowledgements This research is supported by the Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (Contract No. 70420) and the Introduced Talents Fund of East China University of Science and Technology. References
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