MAG Welding Process with Micro-Jet Cooling as the Effective Method for Manufacturing Joints for S700MC Steel

Advanced high-strength steel (AHSS) steels are relatively not very well weldable because of the dominant martensitic structure with coarse ferrite and bainite. The utmost difficulty in welding these steels is their tendency to crack both in the heat affected zone (HAZ) and in weld. The significant disadvantage is that the strength of the welded joint is much lower in comparison to base material. Adopting the new technology regarding micro-jet cooling (MJC) after welding with micro-jet cooling could be the way to steer the microstructure of weld metal deposit. Welding with micro-jet cooling might be treated as a very promising welding S700MC steel process. Tensile and fatigue tests were mainly carried out as the main destructive experiments for examining the weld. Also bending probes, metallographic structure analysis, and some non-destructive measurements were performed. The welds were created using innovative technology by MAG welding with micro-jet cooling. The paper aims to verify the fatigue and tensile properties of the thin-walled S700MC steel structure after welding with various parameters of micro-cooling. For the first time, micro-jet cooling was used to weld S700MC steel in order to check the proper mechanical properties of the joint. The main results are processed in the form of the Wöhler’s S–N curves (alternating stress versus number cycles to failure).