Economic welding of high strength steel

The application of high strength steels provides economic and ecological advantages in many types of structures in the building and plant industry as well as in the mechanical engineering, due to the resource efficient use of material. However, for welded constructions, these advantages are partially offset by conservative design rules and more difficult execution regulations.

The objective of this research project is the development of principles, which lead to significant improvements of the design and execution rules for welded joints from high strength steels. This includes the following subtopics:

• A further development of the design rules in order to an economic execution of high strength steel welds. Therefore, the level of under matching and the construction form of the welded joints will be considered in an appropriate way.
• Inclusion of quenched and tempered steels as well as thermomechanical rolled steels with yield strengths between 500 und 960 N/mm² in the experimental and analytical verification, in order to provide more accurate design rules for these steel grades and degrees of strength.
• Development and optimization of welding processes considering the used base and filler materials. Therefore, quenched and thermomechanical rolled steels are considered for the gas metal arc welding (GMAW). The focus lies on the under matched welded joints.

The parallel development of design and execution rules allows improving the technical rules in both areas. Engineering offices and technical departments of companies in the building and plant industry, manufacturing companies, steel producers, manufacturers of filler material and developers of automation technology will participate from these improvements.