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Causes of cracking
Because of the restricted access as well as production deadlines, it was not possible to carry out metallurgical
examination to confirm causes of cracking. The toe cracks reported were most likely to have been caused by
hydrogen and may have been due to some relaxation of the welding procedure in respect of preheat, energy input or
drying of electrodes. It seems likely that for the delay that occurred, in fact seven days, before HAZ cracking
occurred some additional stress would have to have been applied to the welded joints.
Pad eyes of similar design have been fabricated previously from BS 4360G 50D steel without any indications of
lamellar tearing. The St-52-3M steel used in the present case was known to have been aluminium treated, in which
case the principal non-metallic inclusions would be manganese sulphide with a smaller amount of alumina inclusions.
The MnS inclusion content of a plate is directly related to the sulphide content and a knowledge of the sulphur level
can provide an estimate of the short transverse (ST) ductility of the plate which is one of the factors that governs the
risk of lamellar tearing. The other factor is the degree of restraint of the welded joint.
The ST ductility of the steel involved was estimated to be 5-15% in terms of reduction of area. Correlations between
%STRA and the risk of lamellar tearing that have been built at TWI indicate that the St-52-3M steel would be likely
to suffer from lamellar tearing in highly restrained joints. It is possible that additional stresses could have been
applied to the pad eyes some time after welding because of the application of heat to other parts of the structure.
This could have been caused by preheating or welding at positions remote from the pad eyes which could have set
up reaction stresses which would have added to any residual welding stresses.
Stresses of this nature can cause lamellar tearing or they may cause the faces of very tight pre-existing flaws to
open up so that they can be detected by ultrasonic examination. It is also known that such defects can be made
more readily detectable by stress relief heat treatment, which can cause some separation of the crack faces. For this
particular highly restrained item, it was recommended by TWI that the final NDT inspection should in future be
carried out not less than one week after welding or other heating operations on the module have been completed.
To avoid any possibility of lamellar tearing, plates for pad eyes should be ordered with guaranteed adequate throughthickness ductility. In highly restrained fabrications, the recommendations given in BS 5135 to avoid hydrogen
cracking should be implemented with rigorous control and supervision.