Weld repair practices without post weld heat treatment for ferritic alloys and their consequences on residual stresses: A review

The use of the half-bead, temper bead welding (TBW), and cold repair techniques is proving to reduce the cost of repairs and extend the life of aged components in power plants, petrochemical and hydrocarbon processing industries. It has been a significant area of interest for more than twenty years. A critical factor in this context is residual stress. The presence of residual stresses can lead to cracking which ultimately results in structural failure. This paper reviews the half-bead, TBW, and cold repair technique practices and their consequences on residual stresses within the nuclear, power, refinery and petrochemical industries and some of the contributions made by our group of researchers in this area. This paper reviews recent work by the Monash University group. We report our work on TBW residual stresses when measured using neutron diffraction which shows very little reduction in residual stresses over normally completed welds. The use of automatic FCAW has been explored in our group and is reported.