Characterization of Microstructures and Fatigue Properties for Dual-Phase Pipeline Steels by Gleeble Simulation of Heat-Affected Zone

To increase transmission efficiency and reduce operation cost, dual-phase (DP) steels have been considered for pipeline applications. Welding has to be involved in such applications, which would cause a localized alteration of materials and cause many potential fatigue issues to arise under cyclic loading. In this work, the fatigue crack propagation and fatigue life of simulated heat-affected zone (HAZ) were examined. Results indicate that when the maximum stress is at the same magnitude, the fatigue life at a peak temperature of 1050 °C is very close to that of a peak temperature of 850 °C, and both of them are higher than that of a peak temperature of 1350 °C. The changes in da/dN with ΔK for HAZ subregions are attributed to the variation of crack path and fracture mode during the crack propagation. The fatigue cracks may propagate along the bainite lath preferentially in coarse-grained HAZ (CGHAZ), and the prior austenite grain boundaries can change the crack growth direction. A considerable amount of highly misoriented grain boundaries in fine-grained HAZ (FGHAZ) and intercritical-grained HAZ (ICHAZ) increase the crack growth resistance. The difference of fatigue crack propagation behavior in HAZ subregions between actual and simulated welded joints was also discussed.