Study on impact toughness of TMCP and quenched and tempered high strength steels

In this study, the effect of steel rolling technique, temperature, yield strength and welding heat input on the impact toughness of high-strength steels is studied. The impact toughness of five kinds of high strength steels with yield strength of 550 MPa, 690 MPa and 890 MPa are experimentally studied. The standard Charpy V-notch test is carried out and the absorbed energy AKV of the test specimens is obtained. The test results show that the impact toughness of QT550 high-strength steel is not sensitive to temperature and it also has good impact performance at low temperature. For other high strength steels, with increase of steel strength, the impact toughness is severely degraded with decreasing temperature. For the effect of rolling technique on impact toughness, the QT type high-strength steel generally follows the law that the impact toughness deteriorates with the increase of the yield strength. QT process can produce better impact resistance than TMCP process for 690 grade steel. The effect of temperature on the impact toughness of WM is intensified at high heat input. The impact toughness of the base material (BM), heat-affected zone (HAZ) and weld metal (WM) deteriorates with the rise of the yield strength. QT550 and QT690 show different impact characteristics for HAZ and WM. The former HAZ has better impact performance under high heat input while WM is better under low heat input; both HAZ and WM of QT690 show higher impact toughness under low heat input.