Evaluation of the thermomechanical conditions imposed during the Varestraint test

The Varestraint weldability test is widely used to approach the susceptibility of a material to hot cracking during welding. It consists in increasing the cracking of the material by bending during TIG remelting. The aim of this study is to determine thermomechanical conditions for hot cracking and, further, to fit a hot cracking criterion for the material of concern. The possibilities of local instrumentation being limited in the arc vicinity, the experimental results are complemented by a numerical modelling of the thermomechanical conditions of the test, which has the aim to precise a hot cracking criterion. (authors)