I have conducted hardness testing on etched samples as stated in the NACE MR0175 traverse for shop testing to test

the Metal, HAZ, and weld. Is there a way to test in the field on production weld to verify that the weld is not too hard or to excuse certain construction from Post weld heat treatment. 1. how is the test done is it is possible 2. can it be used to test HAZ also, I assume the weld (cap) and base metal will not be a problem 3. If this test (if possible) is done, how dependent is the hardness number derived this way... 4. how easy/difficult is it to conduct Thanks for your help.
As much as possible, do it right the first time...

SnTMan (Mechanical) http://www.worldoftest.com/telebrineller.htm metengr (Materials)

11 Jan 12 18:22 11 Jan 12 19:20

You can test production welds using a portable hardness tester - Equotip or Microdur, see below http://www.kutlultd.com.tr/files/downloads/pdf/hardness/mobile/Mic10.pdf Without knowing your capabilities and equipment, the real fun begins; 1. You can test the weld cap and surrounding base material, away from the weld region. The HAZ will be a problem because of location in relation to surrounding base material. 2. You should have personnel qualified to use a portable hardness tester with a hardness testing procedure to assure consistency in the field. 3. Surface preparation will be critical for portable hardness testing. Your procedure should detail field metallographic grinding/polishing methods and a suitable chemical etchant to delineate the weld heat affected zone in the base material. 3. I would hire this service out in lieu of trying to so this in-house unless you have lots of production welds and it is worth a dedicated team of technicians to qualify and perform polishing, etching and hardness testing. Here is some background information that may help you; http://www.wtia.com.au/pdf/TGN-PE-01%20Hardness%20testing%20of%20Welds.pdf stanweld (Materials) 12 Jan 12 8:38

You can also test with tellebrineller or pin brineller. Hardness testing of the process side of the joint may prove impossible depending on accessibility. Accurate testing of the HAZ is not possible with these methods. Duwe6 (Industrial) 12 Jan 12 9:24 Even marginally accurate hardness readings are not possible on fieldwelds using Equotip or other rebound type hardness testers. You don't have to believe me, just try it on an actual weld coupon that can be put in a brinnell or rockwell hardness device. The spread in results is amazing and nauseating.

On the other hand, if a FLAT area is ground or filed on the weld, the previously mentioned telebrineller or pin-brinnell device will give very accurate measurements. These are the only devices that have proven themselves to me to actually work on in-situ pipe welds. Yes it is OLD technology, but it actually works. stanweld (Materials) 12 Jan 12 9:44 Adding to Duwe6 comments, a recent study by EPRI and past studies by ARAMCO and another independent lab confirmed the poor accuracy of the rebound test method in field testing of pipe and pipe welds. We recently compared Equotip field results with bench test from coupons removed from the same tube locations tested with Equotip and the results from the Equotip were consistently lower (approximately 30 points BHN) than the laboratory bench test hardness results. metengr (Materials) 12 Jan 12 9:55 As a basic quality control check, hardness testing of production welds can and is used with noted cautions regarding limitation of equipment AND expertise in using such equipment. engr2GW (Petroleum) Thanksa lot for your replies... Yes, if we will do it, it'll have to be done by a third party. I'm asking because we are planning to say, "test for hardness and if the material is soft enough, then forgo PWHT, but if it's hard, just PWHT" from what I'm hearing, does it sound like the testing might be just as much work as the PWHT? to where we might just go ahear and PWHT and not worry about hardness testing... THIS IS FOR SOUR AREAS ONLY thanks again.
As much as possible, do it right the first time...

12 Jan 12 10:36

stanweld (Materials)

12 Jan 12 10:56

If you cannot tset the sour, process side of the weld joint, you will need to hardness test qualify the welding procedure(s). One of the greatest catastrophic events due to SCC occurred at the Unocal refinery out side Chicago. Hardness testing was done by the field contractor responsible for making the field alteration of the vessel but it was done on the OD meeting the Unocal requirements but not the process side, which was readily accessible. Hardness of the HAZ on the process side was considerably > than permitted by Unocal or by NACE recommendations at the time. engr2GW (Petroleum) 12 Jan 12 13:49

All the welding procedures in this welding are NACE qualified, meaning, they hardness values for all of them passed...
As much as possible, do it right the first time...

weld7777 (Industrial)

14 Feb 12 15:14

Gentlemen, We qualify our procedures with and without PWHT to ASME, with that being said, we have had no problems with any welds, but we have stuck to the parameters of the procedure. And I agree no accuracy testing pipe. brimstoner (Materials) 16 Feb 12

16:02 Stanweld, Can you provide any references that discuss the Unocal failure? I regularly encounter cases of poorly trained NDE techs playing Russian Roulette with refinery vessels and exotic boiler alloys. The deficiencies typically include any number of the following: No metallurgical training, Inappropriate test method, No task-specific procedure, No knowledge of applicable ASTM testing standard, No/wrong calibration, No surface preparation, Permitting heat treaters to check their own work, Repeating tests until happy results are found, and a few more that don't come immediately to mind

The most recent horror show was two techs getting double overtime to test the HAZ of fillet welds(!!) One was a level 2 visual inspector. I earned less performing a related failure analysis than they got to generate a sheet with random numbers which naturally were lower than realistically possible ... and presumably a PE oversaw the task from his desk. Even with the appropriate equipment, I believe that more than 4/5 of field hardness testing is done wrong. stanweld (Materials) 16 Feb 12 17:35

The blast killed 17 and injured over 20 at the Lemont Refinery. The involved vessel was altered by adding at least one shell course. The R-Stamp holder made the welds with the SAW process, first (primarily) on the OD side and subsequently on the process side. A monel liner was attached as well by fillet welding to the carbon steel shell using the GMAW process. The liner weld terminated adjacent to the shell course, circumferential weld addition which failed in the HAZ. Hardness in the HAZ was > 260 BHN (determined during the failure analysis). I believe that this failure was the first failure attributed to SOHIC but don't quote me on that. My involvement was during the discovery phase at the initial law suits. The failure prompted examination of numerous vessels in similar service at other refineries; a number of refiner's found similarly cracked welds some nearly 1/2 wall. brimstoner (Materials) wtanweld, Ever arm-wrestle with a shop foreman who thought your suggested sequence was irrelevant? Just one of a long list of reasons I no longer inhale fumes on a daily basis (and the callous on my forehead has nearly faded away). I shall see what I can discover in the vast googleverse. 16 Feb 12 19:01

deco0404 (Mechanical) Guys, we just ran some production test plates as part of our current welding project.

8 Sep 11 5:22

On one of the samples the hardness results are a little high. We have one reading (out of 45) which is 378Hv. Our max allowable is 350Hv. We are working to DNV C401. My query; There were 3 readings taken in this particular location (weld HAZ), the average of the 3 readings is 314Hv. I have done hardness testing down the years, and as it is quite a subjective test, we have always worked on average readings, and not individual readings. Does my test plate pass the test or not? regards Declan Eddycurrentguy (Petroleum) 8 Sep 11 6:56 I would take additional readings close to, (but not too close, lol) to the high reading, or take another traverse above/below for comparison. Hardness tests can be affected by many factors...its possible you hit a patch of transformation product that is not representative of the remainder. metengr (Materials) What does DNV C401 require?????? deco0404 (Mechanical) Sorry, max 350Hv. SJones (Petroleum) 8 Sep 11 8:33 Neither DNV-OS-C401, nor ISO 6507-1, indicate that average hardness is the criterion. Values are to be reported per individual indentation. As per the applicable standard, the test has failed to meet the stipulated criteria. How such a failure can be redressed will be for agreement between the contracting parties. If it were EEMUA 158 as the applicable specification, two further complete macro-hardness tests would be required.
Steve Jones Materials & Corrosion Engineer http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/83b/b04

8 Sep 11 7:56 8 Sep 11 7:58

Metaljon (Materials)

8 Sep 11 22:48

Yes retest macro hardness required. Could be inadequate preheating. What preheating temperature did you use? deco0404 (Mechanical) Preheating is only 50deg C Metaljon (Materials) What material plate grade are you using? 10 Sep 11 22:17 10 Sep 11 8:02

deco0404 (Mechanical) just a standard grade NV D36. .15C, 1.5Mn..shipbuilding steel, normalised and rolled. Duwe6 (Industrial)

11 Sep 11 3:52 12 Sep 11 13:22

"hard spots" in steel plate are not unknown, even with today's Slab-Cast steel. I don't know their origin, just that you find them on occasion. These occasions are pretty rare in the last 2 decades, but they still [barely] exist. The ones I find are less than 10mm in diameter, as when I move over a little [5mm or less] the steel is 'normal'. brimstoner (Materials) 26 Sep 11 14:12

I'm not familiar with the material, but a limit of 350 HV in the HAZ tells me this steel is something more hardenable than garden variety structural. Therefore 50C sounds like very inadequate preheat. 378 over 350 is a significant miss. I assume you are using Vickers with a 10kg indentation load. Hopefully you are not running into the dreaded and much-debated local brittle zones (LBZ). My philosophy on HAZ testing is that you report the hardest result, unless it is clearly an outlier. Maximum hardness often lies near the plate surface, where it matters most. I have seen many sloppy, metallurgically ignorant lab techs (and some engineers) get weld hardness testing criminally wrong. (I'm not suggesting you are in that group.) QAFitz (Materials) 1 Oct 11 17:54 As noted in this thread, "hard spots" in steel plate are not uncommon and, from what I know about welding, throw in all of the variables in any heat affected zone, wow. I suppose anybody could find whatever reading they desire. I don't dabble in DNV C401 to know of what I speak except as I stated in this post. Viking5711 (Materials) 13 Feb 12 15:41

By the sounds of it you are using a Vickers hardness, in that case I would make sure the hardness values meet the requirements. If you are doing field hardness using a MIC 10 I would consider looking into ASTM A1038 at the proper calibration requirements for this equipment. Using an incorrect calibration standard can drastically change the results

recently ordered Rockwell B standards and (I should have known in advance) received brass, which for the Microdur MIC-10 I use is out of the question. (I'd like to know in general how brass started to be used for calibration blocks.) I'd like to hear people's experiences and solutions to Microdur's requirement (in their operating manual) that calibration blocks be of 'similar material' to that being tested. By 'similar material' do they merely mean similar elastic (Young's) modulus? I am looking at testing the entire range of Cr-Mo steels up to 10% Cr, including some exotic CSEF alloys. EdStainless (Materials) In the high B range you can get a lot of different material so watch carefully. Modulus and strain hardening rate can both impact the hardness readings that you get.
==================== Plymouth Tube

6 Sep 11 15:48

stanweld (Materials)

6 Sep 11 16:22

The MIC-10 is precalibrated for maerials (steels) having a Young's Modulus of approximately 29,000,000. Do not use your brass blocks unless you need to recalibrate for testing materials with similar modulus to the brass test block. The MIC-10 normally comes with a standard steel test block. brimstoner (Materials) Any thoughts on using Brinell bars for this purpose? They are steel at least. stanweld (Materials) 7 Sep 11 8:57 I've often used the Brinell bars to verify accuracy with the MIC-10 & MIC-20 hardness testers. A third party Engineering study comparing MIC-10, MIC-20, Rebound hardness, PIN Binell & Brinell indicated that the MIC-20 provided greater test accuracy than the MIC-10. Rebound hardness values were found to be highly inaccurate. Tests were performed on P91 materials and welds. brimstoner (Materials) Thanks stanweld, At the GE website, the MIC-20 just seems like two testers in a package - the MIC-10 plus a rebound tester, although with a more elaborate computer attached. Both Mic-10 and MIC-20 use the UCI method, so how would MIC-20 be better? I would love to see that report if it is publicly available. I agree the UCI method (and TIV) are the only ones to use for HAZ, but I have witnessed plenty of techs report HAZ hardnesses on critical refinery equipment without bothering to actually locate the HAZ or even knowing how to do that. Anyway my concern is more with obtaining reliable blocks (I am stuck with the MIC-10 tester). I recently purchased a bunch of Brinell bars covering the range of 110 to 300 HRB. I cleaned them up to 320 grit using my in situ metallography tools and then had them tested using HV10 and HRB/C. The results were all over the map, to the point where I was even questioning whether they were even labelled correctly by the supplier. I can post the results if you are interested. stanweld (Materials) 8 Sep 11 9:03 7 Sep 11 11:18 6 Sep 11 16:36

I'm not sure that why the differences between MIC-10 and MIC-20 occurred. Both used the same applied load for indentation. Possibly due to improved electronics? By the way the rebound test was done with Equotip.

Metaljon (Materials)

10 Sep 11 4:43

The GE instruction manual supplied I think is very poorly written. We have done extensive research on using this instrument and if you are going to use this equipment in the field then you will need to some validation work. The MIC10 uses the Ultrasonic Contact Impedance method and does not use vickers hardness method. Consequently being an impedance measurement it is very sensitive to material type. If you want to get accurate data then you will have to make your own test blocks using the same material as being tested and then heat treat to different hardness conditions. The UCI method should only be used within a defined hardness range based on your own calibration tests. The surface finish is also critical. 320 grit finish is not good enough. If you want good results then you need to polish to 1000 grit but replica quality one diamond finish is best. Then etch the surface so that you can clearly see the weld and HAZ. In the field, if you don't have good hardness calibration blocks then use a Pin Brinell hardness tester as the means of cross validation. Finally if your purpose is to measure HAZ hardness, then this is best measured using a line measurement technique where a series a readings and made across the HAZ.

Can anyone tell me approximately how wide the HAZ would be for a welded 6" STD wall butt weld? I realize it has alot to do with heat input, however, let's assume 1/8" 7018 was used to weld the joint at average heat. I am looking for a real rough estimate here. I'm not sure if it would be around 1 millimeter or 1 inch or somewhere in between. Thanks metengr (Materials) For the HAZ width, figure around 3/16" max as a safe assumption. gtaw (Structural) 3/16 inch sounds like a fair estimate. 23 Jun 10 22:55 23 Jun 10 22:15

Best regards - Al

Ron (Structural)

24 Jun 10 13:29 24 Jun 10 21:05

Agree. In small welds that I've cross-sectioned and etched, that's about the distance I've seen. Downhand (Industrial)

Good info. Ron, have you crossed sectioned and etched anything bigger or any heavywall? Could anyone give me an idea how wide the HAZ would be on bigger and heavier pipe? I am interested because my specs call for the HAZ to be hardness tested in some cases and I am not entirely sure as to how far out from the toe of the weld to catch the HAZ. As well, when cross sectioning and etching is the entire area that appears the HAZ. I have been told that this area is broken down into more than just the HAZ. Is this true? Thanks metengr (Materials) 24 Jun 10 22:19

Downhand; This is not as simple as measuring some distance from the edge or toe of the butt weld, "x" distance. If you need to conduct field or lab hardness testing of the base metal HAZ, you should have the completed weld region chemically macroetched to locate the heat affected zone. Once this is completed, you know precisely the width of the HAZ, and can conduct hardness testing with some assurance. A good chemical macroetch for locating the weld HAZ is an ammonium persulphate chemical etch. The weld region in ferrous materials contains the following; weld deposit, fusion boundary (where the weld and base metal have mixed from melting) followed by the region along the base metal beyond the fusion zone where the original metal structure has been altered from exposure to heat from welding. This altered region is the HAZ and will be delineated by macroetching for hardness testing.

http://www.welding-technology-machines.info/inspection-and-testing-of-welds/etchtest.htm Ron (Structural) downhand...even in larger welds, the HAZ doesn't get tremendously larger in steels. A quick and dirty etchant is hot muriatic acid. 25 Jun 10 7:42

am looking for people's experiences with field hardness testing on boiler materials, including tubes and including HAZs. In particular I am thinking about the Microdur MIC-10 tester, whose accuracy is adversely affected by workpiece vibration effects. What schemes are there for stiffening up thin-wall and/or small-diameter piping/tubing for Microdur testing? What are you using for calibration blocks? Anyone have experience with the optical through-indenter-viewing (TIV) method? It sounds very promising. Metaljon (Materials) 7 Sep 11 20:02 We use the MIC10 hardness tester. It is important with this type of hardness tester to use hardness blocks for calibration of the instrument. We try if possible to use a similar material for the blocks and we have prepared are own standards (none commercially available for the range of materials we require). We have carbon steel, P22, P91 and 316 hardness standards which we test and certify ourselves. We also age the calibration blocks so that we validate the readings over a reasonable hardness range from virgin to degraded. During site jobs, we test the calibration of the instrument at least daily. The GE software for this instrument is poor and we have developed are own macros for this work. As you point our the MIC10 instrument is prone to external vibration and has limitation on thickness. If the boiler tube lengths are long sometimes we clamp the tubes to increase rigidity. We normally measure weld and parent metal hardness. We don't routinely record HAZ as it is a very unreliable test. The HAZ is composed of a range of microstructures and this will cause variation in hardness. Sometime for petrochemical work we measure HAZ but I always qualify the reliability as being low. The optical method TIV is not suitable for site work in my opinion but ok for laboratory work. For pipes, vessels and headers we use the latest Equotip 3 instrument. This gives excellent results provided that the instrument is set up and calibrated properly. It allows the calibration curve for a material to be programmed into the instrument which gives very consistent results +/-2%. Excellent software output for Equotip 3 and makes the reporting a breeze. As with all hardness testers the MIC10 requires a very good surface finish. I have seen some contractors using rough finish and the results are poor. Preparation, calibration and training are key elements to get good results with this instrument. metengr (Materials) 7 Sep 11 20:35 Regarding boiler tubes or heat exchanger tubes, I have very mixed feelings regarding the use of any of the current portable hardness testers for field application. My opinion is that in-situ hardness testing of boiler tubing is unreliable, at best. Pipe and plate end products are a different matter regarding portable hardness testing, as mentioned above. brimstoner (Materials) Metaljon, Thanks, but why would the TIV not be suitable, provided workpiece access is good? Metaljon (Materials) 10 Sep 11 4:00 9 Sep 11 13:34

We have tested the TIV and in my opinion it is not practical for onsite measurement of hardness. The probe is very sensitive to probe alignment and surface finish. If these are not well controlled, the TIV gives quite large scatter in hardness. UCI method also gives scatter but is less sensitive that TIV. TIV is similar to a micro-hardness tester. As the indents are small the technique is highly surface sensitive and any abnormality in surface finish will affect the results. Also the stability of the sample needs to be considered as this will affect the load being applied. Despite this I think TIV has some use in a laboratory setting for coatings and thin materials where test parameters can be tightly controlled. If you review the GE documentation you will see the bounds of applicability for TIV. Under tubes, casting and forgings it lists the technique as being "partly" applicable. I don't know what "partly" means but I think in marketing terms it means "probably not suitable".
http://www.ge-mcs.com/download/hardness-testing/TIV/GEIT-21001-sd299EN_ht-a

ak1965 (Mechanical) brimstoner

10 Sep 11 4:27

to me... for field usage.... poldi hardness tester givsthe best results....! looks bit old fashioned.. but very very accurate.... you know ... OLD is GOLD..! All electronic hardness tester whether MIC 10, Equotip have some or other limitations..! All of the electronic testers give good results when the strucutre under test is heavy ... otherwise.. what you said is right...vibrations create hell of the confusion...! we all konw that calibration pieces are made heavy .. we get good results..! SO try POLDI ... and rely your own eyes...! brimstoner (Materials) Metaljon, I anticipate working on the Cr-Mo alloys in addition to carbon steel (with the MIC-10), so my next step is obtaining calibration standards in 2Cr-Mo and 9Cr-Mo. How do you do it and ensure consistency? Are they available ready-made? I am still a little puzzled by MIC-10's insistence on 'similar material' for the blocks ... I should think that similar class (steels incl. low alloy) and the same elastic modulus are sufficient. I think if anything the YS:UTS ratio should be more significant. Mr168 (Materials) EPRI just had a recent conference over this issue a few weeks ago in their Charlotte branch. I'm hoping they send out copies of the first day presentations, which were available to the public. They had compared the readings from the various methods and common equipment, including standard deviations and inaccuracies between personnel working at the same labs. Needless to say, it was very eye-opening, and not particularly confidence-inspiring when forced to rely on hardness measurements as a key source of damage analysis. If you do some fishing, someone may already have the notes. 15 Sep 11 15:38 15 Sep 11 14:24

brimstoner (Materials)

15 Sep 11 16:03

I am eagerly anticipating that report! My personal estimate of the percentage accuracy of field hardness testing is continually slipping downward; it is now officially below 10%. And that figure excludes Brinell 'testing' done by heat treat contractors ... Metaljon (Materials) 15 Sep 11 18:43

It is true that the general accuracy of the portable hardness is 10%. However if care is taken with the calibration of the instruments using standards, training of technicians and good surface preparation, the accuracy achieved is much better. We regularly achieve accuracy of better than 2% and that is for difficult materials like P91 and stainless. We also check using a pin brinell hardness tester onsite and the results show a very close match with the portable hardness testers. The standard programs that come with Equotip and MIC10 are not good with P91 or stainless. The latest Equotip3 instrument allows input of best curve fit and this gives excellent correlation for aged P91 and stainless when compared to pin brinell. Also it is important to select the appropriate hardness instrument for the job. We use Equotip3 for reasonably thick wall, MIC10 for thinner wall and tubes and TIV for the super thin wall/coating applications. Equotip3 is best for castings and forgings and we don't use MIC10 for this application. I find the biggest inaccuracies is from technicians who don't understand the limitations of the equipment and believe the handbook supplied as being the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The handbooks supplied are only a guide more like marketing literature. I find best to get metallurgists to do hardness testing as they have a better understanding of the material they are testing. However these days every man and is dog has a hardness tester which is why the accuracy of the equipment has fallen into disrepute.

brimstoner (Materials) Metaljon,

16 Sep 11 9:40

I concur with your first statement; in my experience the MIC-10 has rarely been better than 10%, but then the major chain I worked for did do training beyond turning the instrument on and calibrating. However I think in the field it can be useful for finding glaring errors caused by incorrect PWHT of P91, for example. I could not agree more with your last couple of sentences. When you combine the general tendency of semi-technical types and laymen to believe anything that gets displayed on an instrument with the dumbing-down policies of inspection companies, the test result is usually expensive garbage. I see the same thing with PMI, where operators don't understand that most of the displayed digits are random numbers, not significant figures, and it then gets called 'chemical analysis'. [We need a separate thread dedicated to the practices of chain inspection companies (I will declare my interest now, since I compete with them in a few areas). But we are also considering equipment reliability and worker safety here, so I am not entirely self-interested.] vesselguy (Petroleum) 19 Sep 11 9:56

Metaljon, Pardon my ignorance but I would like to know what do you mean when you say "pin brinell"? What is that? You don't mean doing microhardness testing such as Vickers, do you?

brimstoner (Materials) http://www.westportcorp.com/hardness/brinnell/PinBrinellTesters.asp Duwe6 (Industrial)

19 Sep 11 11:58 19 Sep 11 15:40

"Pin Brinnell" is an old-style tester that you whacked with a hammer hard enough that the pin broke, providing a 'calibrated' impact force. Indentation is then read with 'scope like classic Brinnell. Other than for side-by-side comparisons of materials, "Rebound" testerl like the Equotip are basically worthless in the field. Looks good on the huge, polished, dead-flat cal block. Gives irreproducible results in the field. You pick a hardness, and I can just keep testing until that number is found. But it won't be repeatable. The only tester with reproducable and accurate results I have used, including the Mic 10, is the "Telebrinneller" style. As long as the holder is hit hard enough to give an approx. 3mm indentation in the workpiece, it is pretty accurate. And if you are looking for "less than 200 BHN", if you use a 200 BHN bar for the reference bar, all you have to do is 'eyeball' the indentations. If the indent in the work is noticebally larger than the one in the bar, you write "significantly less than 200 BHN". No squinting in the microscope required. Metaljon (Materials) 21 Sep 11 1:18 The pin brinell is very useful for verifying the accuracy of the portable hardness testers. Just needs a consistent hammer blow and then measure the indent. It has a shear pin that must break otherwise reading is invalid. Very easy to use. Only downside is that it leave a big brinell indent in the surface and it is a bit slow. We manufacture our own hardness blocks as there is nothing commercially available. We use reasonably thick sections approx 40mm plate. We have our own heat treatment furnace in the lab. I normalise the samples following by quench and temper cycles. I temper back into about 6 conditions covering the whole range from quenched to very degraded condition. For example for P91 we have hardness blocks ranging from 400HB to 160 HB. We check the hardness using a brinell tester 3000kg and then compare the results to the portable hardness readings. We then do a curve fit and find best polynominal. For Equotip3 it gives an option to input curve fit parameters. For MIC10 we store the data and then re-manipulate data using best curve fit. We check hardness onsite using pin brinell. We always get very consistent results. Also we check our hardness tester daily to check for no drift. The problem with the MIC10 instrument is that it assume a linear interpolation across the whole hardness range which is not correct for P22 and 9Cr. The standard program supplied with the Equotip3 for steels or tools steels does not work for 12Cr, P91 or aged stainless. This is why you have to calibrate the instruments and setup yourself. If you use the standard program setup for MIC10 and Equotip3 then expect an accuracy of about 10%.

Eng-Tips Forums is Member Supported. Click Here to donate. LahaneD (Mechanical)

8 Sep 10 14:00

One of my project pipe spool required PWHT & production hardness test.The material for Pipe spool was A105/A106 GrB (sch STD)& NACE MR0175 was specified on spool drawing. The base metal hardness for A105 was 155-160BHN & for pipe A106 GrB was 135-138 BHN before fabrication. After welding & PWHT(stress relieving at 620 deg C for 2hrs)the hardness for A 105 was 111-120 BHN & that of for A 106 GrB was 102-108 BHN.The weld hardness was between 175-180 BHN. Now the customer is not accepting the material by saying that UTS for A106 GrB may have dropped below to its min requirement. What is the minimum acceptable base metal hardness for above two material after PWHT? how to handle this situation. I am confused???? A quick reply is appreciated. metengr (Materials) 8 Sep 10 15:37 LahaneD; Where was the location for the post weld hardness testing? IF it was located next to the weld region, you will see local softening of the base material because of the heat from welding. This is a typical response for this material. IF the hardness testing was performed remote from the weld region, something else happened to cause softening. Another factor could be surface preparation that could cause lower readings. Normally, PWHT is performed at a temperature that should not affect bulk properties. What I would do is to have a weld coupon of the same material used in production and exposed to PWHT and have tensile specimens removed. The results of the tensile tests should decide the fate of this material, and not necessarily hardness testing. LahaneD (Mechanical) 9 Sep 10 1:02

The PWHT was done for weld joints only (localized).The hardness reading was taken very close to the weld on base metal. kclim (Materials) 9 Sep 10 4:59

How were the hardness measurements taken? With an actual Brinell indenter or were they converted? Sometimes the conversion error can be significant. In particular, the specific case of a rebound tester on thin sections tends to lead to lower than expected hardness values. It's a longshot, but thought I'd throw it out there. Tend to agree with meteng, in that you should fall back on tensiles because thats what the mechanical requirements in the standards refer to. stanweld (Materials) 9 Sep 10 12:33

I've seen some very low carbon equivalents for the involved materials and I would not doubt the potential for lowered hardness after 2 hrs PWHT, especially in the HAZ and the materials were thin wall. LahaneD (Mechanical) 9 Sep 10 13:31 The hardness reading were taken with portable hardness tester (rebound type).The value are not

converted. But is my stand valid that i am not violating the code requirement as code only gives max hardness limit & not minimum. stanweld (Materials) 9 Sep 10 14:44 The rebound hardness values are highly suspect. They are more than likely to lead to a low BHN value in the conversion process. I would not trust their validity at all. TomEun (Materials) 9 Sep 10 14:56 Unless you proved the actual mechanical properties from the heated material, the two materials after PWHT may not be acceptable because the UTS may be dropt below the SMTS (specified minimum tensile strength, 70 ksi for A1-5 and 60 ksi for A106-B). ASTM A105 (2009), 7.3.4 indicates the hardness of all forgings so tested shall be 137 to 187 HB inclusive while A106-B does not have the hardness limitation. However normally minimum 120-125 BHN is required for the strength, UTS = 60ksi.and minimum 135-145 BHN is required for the strength, UTS = 70ksi. Please find API 579 (2007), Table F.1. I am sure all pressure components had strength-calculated with the allowable stresses based on the SMTS before the fabrication. Thomas Eun metengr (Materials) 9 Sep 10 15:04

Unless a specific hardness range is provided within a material specification, I would not use hardness to approximate tensile strength. There are procedure techniques associated with hardness testing that can effect results, period. Hardness testing should be used as a quality check regarding post fabrication heat treatment effectiveness. The only sure thing are tensile test results to evaluate mechanical properties, as I mentioned above. The reason most material specifications for ASME Code applications do not have a minimum hardness value is that the concern is for lack of ductility post fabrication. This is why a maximum hardness would be specified in most cases. LahaneD (Mechanical) 10 Sep 10 2:45 so metengr, I am not violating the code requirements here. so i will not accept the rejection in above case unless it is proved by customer that i have violated the code requirement, right? metengr (Materials) 10 Sep 10 7:27 LahaneD; I reviewed SA 105. The only mention of hardness testing in this specification occurs when a subsize tensile specimen cannot be obtained from a forging that is too small to verify mechanical properties or as in 9.5 a quality check for multiple forgings. With that said, the maximum hardness listed by specification in Table 3 of SA 105 is 187 BHN. For SA 106, there is no hardness testing. The way I see it, you have not in any way violated code requirements as a result of fabrication based on information you provided. If the client has a concern with hardness testing because NACE MR0175, you are only dealing with maximum hardness to ensure adequate tempering after welding/fabrication. You will need to redo the hardness testing following ASTM A 370. If the client still believes the mechanical properties have been compromised because of fabrication, take some of this material and simulate production welding and have a lab perform tensile tests as though you were qualifying a weld procedure. If the post weld mechanical test results meet Table 3 of SA 105 and SA 106, the mechanical properties have not been compromised. The hardness testing may also

need to be redone to verify compliance with NACE MR0175. LahaneD (Mechanical) 13 Sep 10 2:09

metengr, The design code here is ASME B31.3.where the minimum allowable stress at 100F is 20 ksi for A106 GrB. Does it help in any way to support my lower hardness in above case. have I violated ASME B 31.3 code requirement in above case? metengr (Materials) 13 Sep 10 7:43

LahaneD; In ASME B31.3, after PWHT, there is no hardness requirement. So, no you have not violated code requirements. LahaneD (Mechanical) 23 Sep 10 13:38

metengr I have done simulation on same heat pipe & results are good after PWHT.The tensile sample did pass the test. Thanks for your help metengr (Materials) Excellent. Sometimes a little extra work pays off big. 23 Sep 10 20:01