Determination of Preheating Conditions to Avoid Weld Cracking in Steel Constructions (Report 1)

Control of weld cracking is one of the most important problems in welding steel constructions. Two of the authors proposed the use of a new cracking parameter Pw to determine the successful welding procedure to avoid weld cracking for a given chemical compostion of steel used, the amount of diffusible hydrogen in weld metal and the intensity of restraint of the weldments.In the present report, research is focused on the practical use of the above proposals. For this work, firstly, the relations of welding procedures in terms of welding heat input, preheating conditions, plate thickness and others versus cooling time of welds are studied theoretically and experimentally.