Abstract
Hydrogen assisted cracking (HAC) is one of the most complicated problem in welding. Huge amount of studies have been done for decades. Based on them, various standards have been established to avoid HAC. But it is still a chronic problem in industrial field. It is well known that the main causes of the hydrogen crack are residual stress, crack susceptible micro structures and a certain critical level of hydrogen concentration. Even though the exact generating mechanism is unclear till today, it has been reported that the hydrogen level in the weld metal should be managed less than a certain amount to prevent it. Matsuda studied that the residual hydrogen level in the weld metal can be varied even if the initial hydrogen content is same. It is also insisted in this report that the residual hydrogen concentration is in stronger correlation with hydrogen crack than the initial hydrogen content. But, in practical point of view, the residual hydrogen is still hard to consider because measuring hydrogen level is time and cost consuming process. In this regard, numerical analysis is the only solution for considering the residual hydrogen content. Meanwhile, Takahashi showed the possibility of predicting the residual hydrogen by a rigorous FE analysis. But, few commercial software suitable for solving the weld metal hydrogen has been reported yet. In this study, two dimensional thermal - hydrogen coupled analysis was developed by using the commercial FE software MARC. Since the governing equation of the hydrogen diffusion is similar to the heat transfer, it is shown that the heat transfer FE analysis in association with hydrogen diffusion property can be used for hydrogen diffusion analysis. A series of simulation was performed to verify the accuracy of the model. For BOP (Bead-On-Plate) and the multi-pass butt welding simulations, remaining hydrogen contents in the weld metal is well matched with measurements which are referred from Kim and Masamitsu.