Fatigue Strength Improvement Due to Alloying Steel Weld Toes With WC-Tool Constituent Elements Through Friction Stir Processing

Abstract Friction stir processing (FSP) enables surface modifications using a rotational tool and can likely be applied as a new post-weld treatment for improving fatigue strength. When applying FSP to high strength materials, tool wear occurring at the interface between the tool tip and the topmost steel layer has been regarded as an unavoidable issue and is related to the tool rotational speed. The present study investigated the relationship between the tool rotational speed and fatigue strength of arc-welded high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steel joints with weld toes subjected to FSP using a spherical-tip WC tool. FSP was conducted on the weld toe of HSLA steel joints with various tool rotational speeds. Tool wear increased with increase in tool rotational speed, and consequently contents of constituent elements of the WC tool increased in the topmost steel layer of weld toes, leading to large increase of fatigue strength. One reason for the increase with tool rotational speed is significant increase of solid solution hardening due to supersaturated W and C in the topmost steel layer consisting of martensite laths. The hardened topmost steel layer prevented fatigue crack initiation, and the increased fatigue strength depended on the contents of supersaturated W and C.