Evaluation of chemical composition limits of GMA welding electrode specifications for HSLA-100 steel

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Evaluation of chemical composition limits of GMA welding electrode specifications for HSLA-100 steel

Sampath, K. / Varadan, R.

A PC-based Turbo C++ algorithm was developed to quantitatively evaluate chemical composition limits of selected GMAW electrode specifications and two relevant U.S. patents for potential application to HSLA-100 steel. The algorithm chiefly consisted of three parts: the first part defined boundary conditions for obtaining a predominantly low-carbon bainitic weld metal; the second part covered chemical composition ranges for four principal elements carbon, manganese, nickel, and molybdenum as specified in AWS A5.28, MIL-E-23765/2E for ER100S- and ER120S-type welding electrodes, or as claimed in U.S. Patents 5,523,540 or 5,744,782; and the third part addressed 'mutually inclusive' computational requirements. Results showed both A5.28 and MIL-E-23765/2E specifications did not contain any acceptable ER100S type composition, but contained 177 of ER120S-type compositions, with carbon content ranging from 0.03 to 0.08 wt-%. Both U.S. Patents contained thousands of ER100- and ER120S-type electrode chemical compositions, and appeared quite robust for application to welding HSLA-100 steel. The algorithmic approach clearly demonstrated that a high-strength steel welding electrode specification could not allow simultaneous increases in carbon and nickel contents, or concurrent increases to any three or all four of the principal alloying elements near their respective specified upper limit.