LINCOLN WELDING PREHEAT CALCULATOR

Product Description
This is NEW LINCOLN WELDING PREHEAT
CALCULATOR.
A simple to use and inexpensive calculator. It is based on
practical experience and tends to be very conservative when compared with the
TWI method.
The purpose of preheat:- 1. Reduce the risk of hydrogen
cracking 2. Reduce the hardness of the weld heat affected zone 3. Reduce
shrinkage stresses during cooling and improve the distribution of residual
stresses. If preheat is locally applied it must extend to at least 75mm from the
weld location and be preferably measured on the opposite face to the one being
welded.
Background To Preheating When hydrogen diffusing from a
solidified weld meets a hard microstructure under a tensile stress a crack is
likely! Hydrogen cracking normally occurs in the heat affected zone where hard
microstructure is to be found, occasionally it can occur in weld
metal.
Hydrogen This is a very searching gas that can be liberated by
oil, grease, rust etc. and water under the right conditions. The greatest risk
comes from hydrogen generated within the arc from damp or contaminated welding
consumables, mainly fluxes or electrode coatings. Contamination on the parent
metal can also be a risk unless the heat from the welding arc can drive it away.
Moisture from condensation on the parent metal will normally be driven off by
the heat from the arc before it can get into the weld pool. Hydrogen in the
atmosphere is unlikely to penetrate the arc envelope unless welding is carried
out in very damp and humid conditions. A hydrogen crack can take anything from a
few hours to 24 hours to occur. After 24 hours cracking is still possible but
less likely, although there have been some reported cases of cracking at 72
hours. It is therefore good practice to allow at least 48 hours before carrying
out any NDE. Hydrogen will eventually disperse from the parent metal, within a
few days at room temperature or a few hours if held at around 200?C. Hydrogen
cracking is only possible at room temperature, this is why it is also referred
to as cold cracking
Parent Metal A hydrogen crack requires a hard
microstructure which is created by a hardenable material subject to fast cooling
from 800?C to 500?C. Cooling can be slowed down by:- • applying preheat, •
maintaining a high interpass temperature, • increasing welding power and
reducing travel speed. The heat sink caused by the parent metal thickness and
the number of available paths the heat can take to escape, also influence
cooling rate. (However once the heat sink reaches a certain size further
increases have a negligible effect on cooling rate.). This is why when
determining preheat the term combined thickness is used, for a butt weld it is
twice the thickness of the parent material and for a T fillet weld three times
the thickness. The hardening of a carbon manganese steel/low alloy steel is
influenced primarily by carbon content and to a lesser extent other constituents
such as manganese, chrome, silicone etc. The Carbon Equivalent is a formula used
to express the harden-ability of a particular alloy steel in terms of an
equivalent plain carbon steel. Several such formula exist, the one favoured for
low alloy steel is the IIW formula: CEIIW = C + Mn/6 + (Cr + Mo + V)/5 + (Ni +
Cu)/15 Current steel specification do not restrict or limit the Carbon
Equivalent and as most steel specs permit a wide range of composition it is
possible that one batch of steel may require pre-heat and another may not. Very
low sulphur ( < 0.015%) will increase hardening and special precautions are
required when determining the minimum preheat level. Additions of niobium also
require special consideration. For welds subject to high restraint more preheat
is advisable (suggest, Increase CE by 0.3 or go down one hydrogen
scale).
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