Design of Metal Cored Wire for Erosion Resistant Overlay Welding

Erosion is a common failure mode of materials frequently encountered in plant and power industry. Although the erosion resistance of Fe-base alloy has been inferior to the other expensive materials, it is expected that the strain-induced martensitic transformation can impart high erosion resistance to Fe-base alloy. The key technology to develop Fe-base metal cored welding wire for erosion resistant overlay welding may include the strain-induced metallurgy for hardening rate control and the welding flux metallurgy for dilution control. Sophisticated studies showed that the strain-induced martensitic transformation behavior was related to the critical strain energy which was dependent on the alloy composition. Dilution and bead shape of overlay weld were proved to be affected by metal transfer mode during gas tungsten arc welding and elements in welding fluxes. It was considered that the highly erosion resistant Fe-base overlay weld could be achieved by precise control of alloy composition to have proper level of critical strain energy for energy absorption and welding flux formulation to have small amount of deoxidizing metallic elements for dilution.