Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899

Analysis of stainless steel welded joints: a comparison between

destructive and non-destructive techniques
Carosena Meola∗ , Antonino Squillace, Fabrizio Memola Capece Minutolo,
Renata Erica Morace
Università di Napoli Federico II, P. le Tecchio, 80 80125 Napoli, Italy

Abstract

Welding is a joining procedure that offers some benefits over mechanical fasteners such as weight reduction and absence of notches
induced by machining operations. Adversely, welding generally involves heating the two parts to be joined, but heating can entail local
modifications with loss of material characteristics. The welded zone may also include defects such as gas bubbles, or spurious materials
with deleterious effects on the material strength and durability. Thus, each welded joint should be non-destructively tested for quality
assurance. In the present work two kinds of joints, lap and butt, are analysed. The joints are obtained from both similar and dissimilar
materials, which are plates of AISI304 and AISI430. Two different autogenous (i.e. without filler material) fusion–welding processes
are employed, which are the conventional tungsten inert gas (TIG) and the CO2 laser beam. Joints are investigated with destructive and
non-destructive techniques to evaluate the presence and the extension of the so-called heat-affected zone and/or the occurrence of defects.
Non-destructive evaluation is performed with infrared lockin thermography and results are compared to macrographs and micro-hardness
destructive measurements.
© 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Stainless steel welded joints; Lockin thermography; Vickers hardness

1. Introduction stainless. The metallurgical features of each group generally

Within the term stainless steel is commonly indicated an
alloy, including at least 10.5% of chromium (Cr) and no
more than 1.5% of Carbon (C). Such alloy is used in both
wrought and cast form for a wide range of engineering
applications. Stainless steel, being rust-resisting, is partic-
ularly suitable for the production of everyday households
and commercial products especially for alimentary use.
Thus, on account of the widespread use of stainless steels
and their importance in critical industrial technologies, it is
justified the wide interest of researchers and technicians on
weldability and service integrity of such materials.
Beyond a general simple description, stainless steels may
be collected in five families, which differ from each other
for the basic microstructure and the specific characteris-
tics. For example, AISI430 belongs to the family of ferritic
stainless, while AISI304 belongs to the family of austenitic
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 081 768 3389;
fax: +39 081 239 0364.
E-mail addresses: carmeola@unina.it (C. Meola), squillac@unina.it
(A. Squillace), capece@unina.it (F.M.C. Minutolo), remorace@unina.it
(R.E. Morace).
determine the weldability characteristics of the steel in that
group. It is worth noting that the austenitic type is among
the most easy to weld and allows fabrication of elevated
toughness welded joints even in the as-welded conditions,
without any further treatment. In fact, serviceable joints
can be readily produced if composition, physical and me-
chanical properties are well suited to the welding process
and condition. However, some factors of material degrada-
tion, such as heat flux, contamination, carbide precipitation,
cracking and porosity, must be considered [1]; in particu-
lar, the weldability of austenitic stainless steels is governed
by their susceptibility to hot cracking. Against, ferritic
stainless steels, which are less weldable than the austenitic
ones, when welded give rise to joints of low ductility as
a result of grain growth, which occurs at high temperature
and is related to the absence of allotropic transformation
[1].
Basically, stainless steels may be welded in different
ways; of course, it is important to choose the most ad-
equate method to obtain joints of good characteristics.
The tungsten inert gas (TIG) method, which is extensively
used for welding a wide variety of metals, is employed
for fairly thin stainless steel products or where a close

0924-0136/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2004.04.303
1894 C. Meola et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899
control of the bead profile and geometry is needed [2].
Productivity with TIG process is generally fairly low: at-
tempts have been made to improve the welding speed
by increasing the current levels, or improving the hot
wire feeding. Adversely, these measures entail a lack of
flexibility that is instead required for general industrial
utilisation [2]. Laser beam welding uses a moving very
high-density coherent optical source. The coherent nature
of the laser beam allows it to be focused to a very small
spot, leading to high energy densities. This possibility is
a primary factor in establishing its potential for welding.
Numerous applications have shown that the precision of
laser welding is rivalled only by the electron beam weld-
ing [1]. The high joint completion rate achievable with
laser welding is attractive for many applications, and this
process can join virtually all grades of stainless steels.
In particular, the low thermal conductivity of austenitic
stainless steels allows high welding speed and very deep
penetration [2]. Generally, industrial laser welding is per-
formed with CO2 lasers, but recently appropriate NdYAG
lasers become available with the main advantage of fully
three-dimensional beam manipulation and greater manufac-
ture flexibility.
It is important to note that, whatever the method, weld-
ing generally involves heating the two parts to be joined and
this can entail modifications with loss of material character-
istics. In more details, there is a zone, called heat-affected
zone (HAZ), around the weld bead, where the material prop-
erties may be severely damped with variation of hardness
and reduction of yield strength, breaking load, and so on. In
addition, the welded part may include defects such as gas
bubbles, or spurious materials with deleterious effects on the
material strength and durability.
To avoid undesired failure of structural parts, each joint,
before use, should be non-destructively evaluated with the
most adequate technique. At the moment there are many
non-destructive techniques available [3,4], but only a few
allow in situ analysis. In this context, infrared (IR) thermog-
raphy, which is a two-dimensional, non-contact technique of
surface temperature maps, seems attractive for the control
of full-size components, or parts in service, or procedures
in process [5].
The attention of the present paper is focused on the analy-
sis, with destructive and non-destructive techniques, of both
single lap and butt joints of similar and dissimilar materials,
i.e. AISI304 and AISI430, and obtained with TIG and CO2
laser beam processes [6,7]. Destructive tests include conven-
tional macrographs and micro-hardness measurements made
on a slice of each joint. Non-destructive evaluation is per-
formed with infrared lockin thermography. It is worth noting
that, even though the welded joints herein examined belong
to already destructively investigated subject matter [6], the
work usefulness mainly lies in the efforts made to spread
information about the aid provided by infrared thermogra-
phy for material evaluation and assessment/improvement of
procedures.
Table 1
Specimens designation for laser beam lap joints
Laser beam travel speed V (mm/min) Specimens designation
700 AFLL/1
800 2
900 3
1000 4
1100 5
2. Materials and methods
Several specimens are fabricated in laboratory from two
different stainless steels, which are the austenitic AISI304
and the ferritic AISI430. Two different joints, i.e. butt and
lap are obtained with two welding processes, which are the
tungsten inert gas and the high power density CO2 laser
beam. For convenience, each specimen is marked with a la-
bel of four characters: first and second ones indicate materi-
als of the two parts (A for austenitic AISI304, F for ferritic
AISI430), the third character indicates the kind of joint (B
for butt, L for lap) and the last indicates the welding process
(T for TIG and L for laser). This label, in the case of joints
laser welded, is followed by a slash plus a number to indi-
cate the laser beam travel speed V, (1 for V = 700 mm/min,
2 for V = 800 mm/min and so forth) as specified in Table 1.
To study the influence of the speed variation, a specimen
is fabricated by lap welding, with a CO2 Rofin–Sinar laser
and with the key–hole welding technique, an AISI304 plate
1 mm thick to an AISI430 plate 2 mm thick, at intervals of
10 mm, as shown in Fig. 1. This specimen, called AFLL/1–5,
includes the five speed values (one for each bead increas-
ing from left to right) listed in Table 1. Other parameters
such as: CO2 laser source, 1.5 kW power level, shielding gas
N2 are instead kept constant. Another sample AFBL still
includes the two different materials (AISI304/AISI430) but
it is fabricated by butt welding two plates 3 mm thick. All
specimens are laser welded without filler material.
A TIG butt joint, AABT, including two AISI304 plates
5 mm thick, is manually fabricated at room conditions with
Fig. 1. Picture of the specimen AFLL/1–5.
 C. Meola et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899
Fig. 2. Sample for Vickers micro-hardness measurements.
a Miller 375 P constant current ac/dc arc-welding power
source, without filler material and using argon as shield gas.
The specimens are analysed with both destructive and
non-destructive techniques.
2.1. Destructive tests
Conventional macrographs and micro-hardness measure-
ments are performed to evaluate: the soundness of a welded
joint; the shape and microstructure of the weld bead; the ex-
tension and microstructure of the heat affected zone; mate-
rial modifications. These tests are generally made on a small
sample, which requires mechanical cutting of a slice from
the original specimen and smoothing of its surface (grind-
ing, polishing with emery paper of up to 2000-grain size,
scouring).
Macrographs are obtained by viewing with an optical mi-
croscope the smoothed surface, after it has been etched with
specific chemical reagents.
The Vickers micro-hardness is measured over a smoothed
surface. A certain number of indentations are performed,
as sketched in Fig. 2, at depth, z, and fixed intervals along
the x direction to include the entire zone likely affected by
the welding process. In particular, for TIG-welded joints,
indentation points are located at one depth only, exactly in
the middle plane with respect to the joint thickness, i.e. z
= 2.5 mm, and at intervals of 2 mm along the x direction
(due to large extension of both weld bead and heat affected
zone). Instead, for butt laser-welded joints micro-hardness
measurements are performed at two different depths of 1 and
2 mm, and at intervals of 0.25 mm along the x direction (due
to the very narrow weld bead and moderate extension of
the heat affected zone). At last, for lap laser-welded joints,
measurements are made at three z values of 0.21, 1.5 and
2.79 mm and at intervals of 0.3 mm along the x direction.
2.2. Non-destructive evaluation with lockin thermography
Infrared thermography may represent a very helpful tool
to be exploited for the assessment of manufacturing pro-
cedures as well for non-destructive evaluation of either
end products, or parts in service. Basically, two different
approaches are possible for non-destructive evaluation: tra-
1895
ditional pulse thermography (PT) and modulated (or lockin)
thermography (MT) [8–12].
In the present work, the evaluation of welded joints is
performed with lockin thermography. The object, under
evaluation, is stimulated using a modulated heat flux, which
penetrates into the object to a certain depth which depends
on the wave cycle time (the slower the wave, the deeper the
penetration) and the material thermal properties (heat con-
ductivity, heat capacity and density). The modulated heat
transport can be described in terms of a heavily damped
wave where both real and imaginary parts of the com-
plex wave number are given by the inverse of the thermal
diffusion length µ, which is given by:


α
µ= (1)
πf
where α is the thermal diffusivity of the material and f the
wave frequency. The depth range, for the amplitude image,
is given by µ while the maximum depth p, which can be
inspected, for the phase image corresponds to 1.8 µ. In
the present paper, only phase images are presented; a local
variation of colour indicates a local variation of phase angle.
Basically, the experimental set up includes the specimen,
a heat source (quartz lamp of 1 kW) and an infrared cam-
era [12]. The lamp is positioned at about 1.5 m from the
specimen surface, while the position of the infrared camera
depends on the employed lens and on the desired field of
view. The surface of the specimen to be viewed by the cam-
era is chosen according to test requirements; of course, one
specimen can be tested by viewing whatever surface, or all
surfaces each at a time.
The test procedure consists of acquiring phase images
while the specimen surface is thermally stimulated with a
sinusoidal heat flux. The wave frequency for the Agema
900 Thermovision coupled with the lockin option could be
varied from 3.75 Hz (267 ms) down to 0.0037 Hz (273 s) in
15 intervals. The lamp is previously calibrated for each of
the employed wave frequency to ensure that the temperature
waveform is really sinusoidal. Generally, tests start at a quite
high wave frequency at which, depending on the material
diffusivity, only surface (or low depth) defects are visible
and later on, to visualize deeper layers, the frequency is
decreased until the entire thickness has been inspected, or the
minimum selectable value (f = 0.0037 Hz) has been reached.
The images are stored for further analysis.
3. Results and discussions
Results are presented in terms of macrographs and distri-
bution of Vickers micro-hardness (HV) for destructive tests,
and of both phase images and average phase angle distribu-
tion for non-destructive evaluation. An attempt is also made
to correlate the variation of the phase angle with the varia-
tion of the Vickers micro-hardness.
1896 C. Meola et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899

Fig. 3. Macrographs of the specimen AFLL/1–5.

3.1. Macrographs definite trend for varying V, z, or x. This behaviour may

Macrographs of the five weld beads of the specimen
AFLL/1–5 are shown in Fig. 3; the AISI304 plate 1 mm
thick is on the top. Even though the aspect ratio (height to
maximum measurable width) remains almost constant for
varying the laser beam speed, there is a significant reduction
of the bead width with increasing the laser beam speed. In
fact, the weld bead resembles a mushroom with pileus on
AISI304 and stem on AISI430; the pileus remains almost
the same, while the stem becomes more and more slender
as the speed increases.
It can also be observed that a darker structure, resembling
an almost secondary bead, appears inside the weld bead, for
V = 700 mm/min (Fig. 3a), and becomes milder and milder
as the speed increases; such structure vanishes at the highest
speed. Moreover, it seems that, outside the weld bead inside
the heat affected zone, the material grain size becomes more
and more fine as the speed increases. These effects may
perhaps be ascribed to material modifications induced by
heat fluxes, which strongly depend on the laser beam speed.
However, for precise data interpretation, more tests coupled
also with micrographs are needed.
3.2. Vickers micro-hardness measurements
The values of the Vickers micro-hardness in the weld
bead and in the heat-affected zone (as sketched in Fig. 2),
for the specimen AFLL/1–5 (shown in Fig. 1), are col-
lected in Table 2. On the whole, it seems that there is a
light micro-hardness increase with increasing V and a light
micro-hardness decay with increasing the depth at least for
low speed values; but, it is not possible to recognize any
be ascribed to probable displacement and mixing of melted
material inside the joined parts, this may be in part due to
the employed key–hole welding technique.
Micro-hardness values, taken at z = 2.5 mm in the spec-
imen AABT, are plotted against the x direction in Fig. 4.
The main thing that catches attention is a wide exten-
sion of the heat affected zone with a strong increase of
micro-hardness. Moreover, there is an unexpected strong
micro-hardness variation far away from the center of the
weld bead (x = 0). This most probably may be ascribed to
an incorrect procedure since the specimen was manually
fabricated.
The micro-hardness distribution for a laser beam welded
butt joint of dissimilar stainless steels (specimen FABL) is
shown in Fig. 5. Measurements are performed at two differ-
ent depths of 1 and 2 mm. As expected, the micro-hardness
value measured for the AISI304 parent material is lower
with respect to that measured for the AISI430 one. By com-
paring Fig. 5 to Fig. 4, it can be noted that the heat-affected
zone is very narrow in the case of laser welding, which
otherwise is characterized by a high bead aspect ratio (i.e.
bead depth to width ratio). In addition, the micro-hardness
values measured for the specimen FABL (Fig. 5) display a
much lower scatter with respect to those measured for the
specimen AABT (Fig. 4) and this represents another point
in favour of the key–hole laser welding method and against
the TIG one.

Table 2
Average micro-hardness values for the specimen AFLL/1–5
Joint zone Depth of Laser beam travel speed V (mm/min)
measure z
(mm) 700 800 900 1000 1100

Weld bead 0.21 187 206 197 211 198

1.50 171 164 190 203 212
2.79 174 171 182 208 187
H.A.Z. 0.21 196 201 197 196 191
1.50 193 187 185 203 206
2.79 188 190 183 199 194
Fig. 4. HV distribution for the specimen AABT.
 C. Meola et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899
Fig. 5. HV distribution for the specimen FABL.
3.3. Phase angle measurements
A phase image of the specimen AFLL/1–5, taken at a
frequency of 0.47 Hz, is shown in Fig. 6. It is visualized
the surface of the thicker (2 mm) plate AISI430 with spa-
tial resolution of about 1 pixel/mm. Five vertical light colour
lines can be distinguished; each line indicates a weld bead
obtained with a different laser speed, which increases from
left to right. As can be seen, such lines are not well de-
fined over the entire height. In more details, for the highest
speed, the line is well marked over almost the entire height;
the other lines tend to vanish, at least over the upper half
part of the surface, as the speed decreases. Over the top,
all the lines (for every speed) go confused with the mate-
rial nearby. This behaviour is likely to be ascribed to a cou-
pled effect of displacement and mixing of melted material
as already supposed in Section 3.2. On the other hand, it
is worth noting that the samples used for macrographs and
micro-hardness evaluation were cut just in the upper side
where the phase angle remains almost constant (homoge-
neous material) and this may also explain the random vari-
ation of the micro-hardness values in Table 2.
A phase image of the specimen AABT, taken at a fre-
quency of 0.12 Hz, is shown in Fig. 7. The main observation
is that the weld bead is characterized by a dark large spot
on the bottom and by light intermittent spots over the en-
Fig. 6. Phase image of the specimen AFLL/1–5.
1897
Fig. 7. Phase image of the specimen AABT.
tire height. The dark spot indicates an inclusion of foreign
material, while the lighter ones indicate discontinuous weld-
ing. By comparing the two phase images it can be observed
that, the image of Fig. 7 displays a more accentuated gran-
ular appearance especially around the weld bead with re-
spect to the image of Fig. 6. At first sight, this could appear
quite strange on consideration that lowering the frequency
reduces the signal noise. However, a probable explanation
is the more significant material modifications induced by
welding in the AABT specimen.
For a quantitative analysis, the mean phase angle value φ
is evaluated by averaging the data in the y direction (i.e. each
point corresponds to an average value along the y direction);
attention is paid to exclude the foreign inclusion (dark spot
in Fig. 7). The distribution of φ along the x direction is
shown in Fig. 8. As can be seen the φ distribution is similar
to the distribution of the Vickers micro-hardness (Fig. 4)
with a peak over the weld bead and large data scattering in
the parent material far away the weld bead.
The distribution of the average phase angle for the speci-
men FABL (dissimilar materials) is shown in Fig. 9. Also in
this case the distribution of the phase angle follows that of the
Vickers micro-hardness (Fig. 5). In fact, as HV, φ increases
Fig. 8. Average phase angle distribution for the specimen AABT.
1898 C. Meola et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155–156 (2004) 1893–1899

angle. For a choice of the most effective technique the fol-

lowing observations are made.

• Macrographs give precise details about material modifica-

tions induced by welding, but require mechanical cutting
of a slice from the original specimen and appropriate sur-
face preparation. Moreover, improper etching with chem-
ical reagents may affect material characteristics leading
to wrong conclusions.
• Vickers micro-hardness measurements give indication
about the HAZ extension. This technique, apart from the
sample preparation (cutting and smoothing), requires a
large number of measurements because of the statistical
probability that the indenter catches the center of a grain,
or the grain boundary.
• Lockin thermography is a non-contact technique which
Fig. 9. Average phase angle distribution for the specimen FABL. allows for easy, quick and in situ analysis; this technique
can detect welding defects, recognize materials of differ-
ent characteristics and give information about the mate-
rial modifications induced by welding. In addition, it may
be used to choose areas to be subjected to destructive
tests.

Thus, a synergic use of the three techniques may be help-

ful for a complete characterization of welded joints and for
choice and/or improvement of the welding method.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. G.M. Carlomagno

(DETEC) University of Naples for permitting the use of the
infrared system.
Fig. 10. Average phase angle against micro-hardness for the specimen
AABT.

References
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3.4. Phase angle to Vickers micro-hardness correlation
Data obtained with the three different techniques and pre-
sented in the previous Sections 3.1–3.3 are in general agree-
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that the phase angle increases with increasing the Vickers
micro-hardness.
4. Conclusions
From an analysis of results it is found that to a variation
of Vickers micro-hardness corresponds a variation of phase
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