Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The US Navy is currently developing a new family of high-strength , low-alloy steels which derive a significant portion of their strength from copper precipitation. These highly weldable steels require little or no preheat. resulting in substantial cost savings. The first of these steels. HSLA-80, has been certified for ship construction, but recent studies have indicated some susceptibility to stress relief cracking in weldments. HSLA-100, a modification of HSLA-80, is now being considered for several higher-strength naval structures. Stress-relief cracking has not been studied previously in this steel and is the subject of investigation in this work. The steel weldments were loaded below their yield strength, heated to temperatures of 550°-650° C, and permitted to stress relieve for one hour. At all temperatures, the steel exhibited susceptibility to stress relief cracking in certain stress ranges. Optical and scanning electron microscopy exhibited intergranular cracking which always traversed the coarse-grained region of the heat-affected zone. Auger and transmission electron microscopy indicated high concentrations of alloying elements at the grain boundaries. Stress-relief cracking was associated with the diffusion of alloying elements to the prior austenite grain boundaries. / http://archive.org/details/stressreliefcrac00mcnu / Captain, Canadian Forces

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Acoustics is the study of all sound waves, with ultrasound classified as those frequencies above 20,000 Hz. Currently, ultrasound is being used in many industries for a variety of purposes such as ultrasonic imaging, ultrasonic assisted friction stir welding, and ultrasonic spot welding. Despite these uses, the effects of ultrasound on phase stability and resultant mechanical properties has been minimally analyzed. Here we study the impact waves play in ultrasonic welding and design an apparatus to maximize waves entering aluminum alloy samples. Aluminum 2139 and 7050 are used because they are precipitation strengthened by metastable phases so temperature change, and the corresponding phase stability, can greatly impact their strength. Results suggest that the ultrasonic welder primarily imposes a localized temperature spike due to friction, averaging over 200°C in a few seconds, which generally lowers the Vickers hardness due to coarsening or even dissolution of strengthening precipitates. Conversely, the new design increases the Vickers hardness by up to 30% over the initial hardness of approximately 63HV for aluminum 2139 and 83HV for aluminum 7050, respectively, while only increasing the temperature by an average of approximately 10°C. This new design was unable to achieve peak hardness, but the strengthening it achieved in two minutes was equivalent to one month of natural aging. If this system was able to be fine-tuned, it could serve as a quick strengthening process for recently weakened aluminum alloys, such as after friction stir welding.