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Mitigation of Harmful Effects of Welds in Zirconium Alloy Components Pages: 21 Published: Jan 1994
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View License Agreement Welding produces local residual tensile stresses and changes in texture in components made from zirconium alloys. In the heat-affected zone in tubes or plates, the basal plane normals are rotated into the plane of the component and perpendicular to the direction of the weld. Thin-walled Zircaloy-2 tubes containing an axial weld do not reach their full strength because they always fail prematurely in the weld when pressurized to failure in a fixed-end burst test. Reinforcing the weld by increasing its thickness by 25% moves the failure to the parent metal and improves the biaxial strength of the tube by 20 to 25% and increases the total elongation by 200 to 450%. In components made from Zr-2.5Nb, the texture in the heat-affected zone promotes delayed hydride cracking (DHC) driven by tensile residual stress. Although the texture is not much affected by heat-treatments below 630°C and large grain interaction stresses remain as a result of mixed textures, macro-residual tensile stresses can be relieved by heat treatment to the point where the probability of cracking is very low. | ||
