Abstract
Many pressure vessels for the power plants are fabricated from low alloy ferritic steels. The inner sides of the pressure vessels are commonly weld_cladded with austenitic stainless steels to minimize problems of corrosive attack. The submerged-arc welding(SAW) process is now used in preference to other processes because of the possibilities open to automation to reduce the overaII welding times. The most reliable way to avoid underclad cracks(UCC) which are often detected at the overlap of the clad beads is to use nonsusceptible steels such as SA508 class 3. At present domestically developed forging steel of SA508 cl.S is now being cladded with single layer by using 90mm wide strip, which transfers higher heat input into the base metal compared to the conventional two layers strip cladding which has been in wide use with 30-60 mm wide strip. But the current indices for the influence of heat input on crack susceptibility are not accurate enough to express the subtle difference in crack susceptibility of the steel. Therefore, the purpose of this present study is: l) To determine UCC susceptibility on domestic forging steel, SA508 cl.S cladded with single layer by using submerged arc 90mm strip and, 2) To optimize heat input range by which the crack susceptibility could be eliminated.
