Effect of normalizing heat treatment on the mechanical behaviour of low-alloy steel weld metals

In equipment manufacturing there are occasions when the base metal need to be hot or cold worked prior to welding. After welding, the components have to be submitted to a normalizing heat treatment in order to recover the original mechanical properties. In this work, low alloy steel weld metals have been studied in the as-welded condition and after normalizing heat treatment. It was observed a high decrease of the tensile properties after normalizing. The toughness increases after normalizing heat treatment, except for one weld metal where a great content of martensite-austenite-bainite constituent was formed.