Studies on Shielded Active Gas Forge Welded API 5CT L80 Material at Different Cooling Rates

Abstract

Shielded Active Gas Forge Welding (SAG-FW) is a solid state bonding process in which two mating surfaces are locally heated and forged together to form a bond. SAG-FW has so far mainly been used to join materials for pipe-line and casing applications. The present study has been conducted on an API 5CT L80 grade material in a prototype forge welding machine. Small-scale pipe specimens have been extracted from the wall of the production casing. The SAG-FW process is completed within a few seconds of heating and forging followed by controlled cooling. The microstructure of the weld is determined by the processing parameters. In this paper, microstructure results for SAG-FW processed L80 material have been obtained for a range of cooling rates and systematically compared with microhardness values. Microstructure observations at different regions of the weld have been made. Faster heating rate and controlled cooling resulted in a mixture of non equilibrium microstructures, but satisfactory mechanical properties have been obtained for optimized processing parameters.