The worldwide preferred method for rail joining is welding; flash butt welding (FBW) and thermite welding (TW) are the two main welding methods used for joining continuous welded rail (CWR) tracks. However, the welds still represent a discontinuity in the track structure due to variations in microstructure, mechanical properties and residual stress levels with respect to the parent rail. These variations can play significant roles in increasing the risk of weld failure under service conditions. In order to better understand how FBW parameters affect these variations, the two main parameters; number of preheating cycles and upsetting forces were varied in three 56E1 rail welds, welded by a stationary FBW machine. Besides, these variations were systematically compared with those that occur in a standard thermite 60E2 rail weld. The thermite weld showed a heat affected zone (HAZ) extent much greater than those measured in the flash butt welds. The flash butt rail weld with a greater upsetting force (Standard Crushed) showed a HAZ extent larger than those in the other two welds (Standard Uncrushed and Narrow-HAZ Crushed), while the weld with fewer preheating cycles (Narrow-HAZ Crushed) showed a smaller extent of the HAZ.All welds showed pearlite colonies with proeutectoid ferrite at the prior austenite grain boundaries in the weld centre, and in the thermite weld zone. The rest zones across the welds exhibited almost fully pearlitic microstructures, but the pearlite at nearly the visible HAZ extents was partially spheroidised. The partially spheroidization zone had the minimum hardness across each of the thermite and flash butt welds. The Narrow-HAZ Crushed weld showed hardness in the weld centre, on average, higher than that of the parent metal. Moreover, the averaged hardness levels in this weld were significantly higher than those in the other two welds. However, these levels in the Standard Crushed weld were slightly lower than those in the Standard Uncrushed weld. Although the visible HAZ extent coincided with the point of minimum hardness, the residual stresses arising from the welds seem to extend much further. Contour Method and laboratory X-ray diffraction techniques were used together to measure the residual stress components across the thermite and flash butt rail welds. The longitudinal residual stress distribution showed tension in the web region along with compression in the head and foot regions of the rail welds. The vertical stress distribution across the flash butt welds was generally similar, and the maximum tensile stress values were comparable to those in the longitudinal direction. While the maximum values of the longitudinal tensile stress increased with decreasing the HAZ widths, these values in the vertical direction were significantly unaffected. However, the longitudinal and vertical tensile residual stresses typically promote the vertical straight-break and horizontal split web failure modes respectively.

Pipe and ring blanks can be produced in several different ways. Today's focus on environmental effects motivates companies to develop processes that are as efficient as possible in their production. Ringsvets AB is a company that produces pipe and ring blanks from a flat stock by rolling and welding the piece to make it stay in its desired form. The direct benefit of the method is the minimizing of material loss, and it has thereby both environmental and economical advantages. The downside of the method is that the processes involved changes the mechanical behavior of the ring, locally around the weld zone. The focus of this master thesis is the processes and how they affect the material, both microstructure and behavior. The processes involved are; rolling, welding, shaping, brushing, forging, heat treatment, and calibration. The purpose of this work was to elevate the knowledge and understanding of the processes at Ringsvets. The goals were to give a theoretical description of them along with practical test results and explanations of how and why they function in reality. A literature study has been conducted which provided a theoretical basis on how the material reacts on certain processes. Practical examination of samples from current production has been done to get evidence of how well the processes are used, and how well they function, in today's production. Lastly, the main focus of the thesis, an evaluation has been made; do theory and practice correlate, and should anything be changed to correlate better? The results showed that the first operations do not alter the material behavior to an unacceptable extent. Forging, on the other hand, gives the material a very high hardness in the weld zone, and that needs to be corrected. The following heat treatment should compensate for that in a perfect world, but does not in reality. The finished ring shows good properties in general but with places where the heat treatment has failed to correct the uneven behavior induced by earlier operations. The heat treatment requires some adjustments before it functions as intended. Some grainshas not been recrystallized which makes them very hard and non-ductile. Future tests using a higher temperature or a longer heat treatment time would reveal the best way to adjust the heat treatment to obtain the desired properties. Other changes in the processes could also be benecial. Interesting things to try and change would, for example, be the degree of deformation in the forging, which affects the recrystallization temperature. Notes should be taken that this examination is done on just one sample of just one size. Analyses of different samples of different sizes should be done to ensure of the accuracy of the examination.

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Em geral, um problema importante em um sistema de soldagem robotizado, ou com manipuladores automáticos, é a necessidade de uma trajetória ser reprogramada quando a forma ou a posição das peças mudam. Como solução a esse problema é proposto um método que utiliza técnicas de visão computacional, para assim detectar a trajetória de soldagem em juntas de topo. O método deve ser dinâmico permitindo a identificação de juntas de topo com cantos não próximos, linhas não retas e tamanhos diferentes entre as peças, assim como apresentar robustez contra variáveis desfavoráveis do ambiente industrial como riscos nas peças ou no fundo e mudanças de luminosidade. A trajetória é detectada baseando-se na linha de bordas da imagem global e adicionalmente trabalha-se sobre duas características da linha de solda: distância quase constante entre linhas paralelas e pixels de linha de solda com menor intensidade de luminosidade que as bordas. Uma etapa é proposta para robustez do método sobre linha de bordas descontinuas e possíveis erros em ponto inicial e final de solda. O trabalho proposto é validado com distintas configurações de junta de topo, como com cantos de peças não coincidentes, linha de solda não reta e diferentes orientações de peças. Os pontos da trajetória de solda obtidos são comparados com uma linha de solda considerada ideal, resultando em uma média e desvio padrão geral inferiores à um valor de 0,5 mm. Uma validação experimental é realizada com uma solda executada por um robô industrial seguindo os pontos de solda detectados, com os resultados demostrando que o método efetivamente pode definir uma trajetória de solda para aplicações industriais robotizadas. / In general, one of the most important problems in a robotic welding system, or in automatic manipulations, is the requirement of a path trajectory to be reprogramed when the shape or the position of the welding pieces are changed. In order to detect the welding seam in butt joints, a method that makes use of computational vision techniques is proposed. The method needs to be dynamic against variation in the configuration of the pieces, so as curved or not straight seam lines, not coincident corners; beside of that, it must to present robustness against unfavorable variables of the industrial environment, so as scratches in the pieces or illumination changes. Two features of the welding line are taken into account to develop the method: almost constant distance between parallel seam lines and darker pixels in the center of the seam than in the borders. Moreover a robustness step is proposed over two weaknesses of the method: discontinuities in the edges of the welding line and possible errors in the location of the start and end welding points. The validation step of the method involves different configuration of butt joints, as pieces without corner being coincident, not straight welding line and different orientations. The points of the welding seam detected by the method, are compared against a set of welding points considered as an ideal set of points, getting as results a mean and standard deviation lower than ± 0.5 mm. An experimental test is carried out by an industrial robot that welds two pieces following the welding line points, with the results showing that the method can effectively define a welding trajectory for industrial robotics applications.

Em geral, um problema importante em um sistema de soldagem robotizado, ou com manipuladores automáticos, é a necessidade de uma trajetória ser reprogramada quando a forma ou a posição das peças mudam. Como solução a esse problema é proposto um método que utiliza técnicas de visão computacional, para assim detectar a trajetória de soldagem em juntas de topo. O método deve ser dinâmico permitindo a identificação de juntas de topo com cantos não próximos, linhas não retas e tamanhos diferentes entre as peças, assim como apresentar robustez contra variáveis desfavoráveis do ambiente industrial como riscos nas peças ou no fundo e mudanças de luminosidade. A trajetória é detectada baseando-se na linha de bordas da imagem global e adicionalmente trabalha-se sobre duas características da linha de solda: distância quase constante entre linhas paralelas e pixels de linha de solda com menor intensidade de luminosidade que as bordas. Uma etapa é proposta para robustez do método sobre linha de bordas descontinuas e possíveis erros em ponto inicial e final de solda. O trabalho proposto é validado com distintas configurações de junta de topo, como com cantos de peças não coincidentes, linha de solda não reta e diferentes orientações de peças. Os pontos da trajetória de solda obtidos são comparados com uma linha de solda considerada ideal, resultando em uma média e desvio padrão geral inferiores à um valor de 0,5 mm. Uma validação experimental é realizada com uma solda executada por um robô industrial seguindo os pontos de solda detectados, com os resultados demostrando que o método efetivamente pode definir uma trajetória de solda para aplicações industriais robotizadas. / In general, one of the most important problems in a robotic welding system, or in automatic manipulations, is the requirement of a path trajectory to be reprogramed when the shape or the position of the welding pieces are changed. In order to detect the welding seam in butt joints, a method that makes use of computational vision techniques is proposed. The method needs to be dynamic against variation in the configuration of the pieces, so as curved or not straight seam lines, not coincident corners; beside of that, it must to present robustness against unfavorable variables of the industrial environment, so as scratches in the pieces or illumination changes. Two features of the welding line are taken into account to develop the method: almost constant distance between parallel seam lines and darker pixels in the center of the seam than in the borders. Moreover a robustness step is proposed over two weaknesses of the method: discontinuities in the edges of the welding line and possible errors in the location of the start and end welding points. The validation step of the method involves different configuration of butt joints, as pieces without corner being coincident, not straight welding line and different orientations. The points of the welding seam detected by the method, are compared against a set of welding points considered as an ideal set of points, getting as results a mean and standard deviation lower than ± 0.5 mm. An experimental test is carried out by an industrial robot that welds two pieces following the welding line points, with the results showing that the method can effectively define a welding trajectory for industrial robotics applications.

O desempenho de serras de fita bimetálica depende principalmente das características da junção de suas extremidades, executada pelo processo de soldagem topo-a-topo por centelhamento. Este é um processo de soldagem por resistência, constituído por um aquecimento elétrico, seguido por um rápido forjamento dos materiais. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo, estudar a influência da variação da corrente elétrica, força de recalque e tratamento térmico de revenimento nas microestruturas e propriedades mecânicas das juntas soldadas topo-a-topo por centelhamento. Neste estudo, foram utilizadas amostras de serras de fita bimetálica de 27 mm de largura e 0,9 mm de espessura. O material é um composto bimetálico constituído por aço rápido M42 para os dentes, soldado a um corpo de aço carbono de baixa liga e alta resistência D-6a. As microestruturas e as propriedades mecânicas das amostras soldadas foram investigadas. Foi observado que os parâmetros de soldagem e o revenimento afetam as propriedades mecânicas. A dureza na seção transversal à linha central da solda apresentou valores levemente superiores à respectiva dureza na seção longitudinal. Amostras não revenidas resultaram em maior resistência à tração, associada ao parâmetro de menor temperatura de revenimento. Ficou evidenciado que o revenimento reduziu a dureza e a resistência à tração de todas as amostras. / The performance of bimetal band saw blades depends mainly on the features of joining their ends, carried out by flash butt welding process. This is a resistance welding method, which consists of electrical heating followed by a fast material forging. The present work has the objective of studying the influence of changing the electrical current, upset force and tempering heat treatment on the microstructures and mechanical properties of the flash butt welded joints. In this study, samples of bimetal band saw blades having width of 27 mm and thickness of 0.9 mm were employed. The material consists of a composite M42 high speed steel for the teeth welded together with a D-6a ultra-high strength carbon low alloy steel for the backer. The microstructure and mechanical properties have been investigated. It is pointed out that welding parameters and tempering affected the mechanical properties. The transversal hardness to the welding center line has shown values slightly higher than the respective longitudinal hardness. Non-tempered samples gave the highest tensile strength with the parameter of lowest tempering temperature. It is also found that the tempering reduces the hardness and the tensile strength of all samples.

This thesis studies the impact of gaps on the properties of laser butt weld performed. For experiment was chosen DC01 ordinary steel and stainless steel X5CrNi18-10 (1.4301) with different thicknesses. The welding parameters depending on the gap between the welded plates remain constant. In the experimental part of the samples were welded using the Yb:YAG laser and compared to the tensile test, macrostructure, microstructure and Vickers hardness. At the end of the thesis are drawn experimental results.

Although high strength steels represent yield strength up to 1300 MPa, welded structures reveal lowerstrength values. The strongest commercially available electrode provides the yield strength of about900 MPa. Therefore, in welded steels with strength above this type of filler metal, achieving anacceptable global strength is a crucial issue. In this master thesis, affects of different welding procedures on static strength of welded jointsof Weldox 960 and Weldox 1100 steels, were studied. These steels are produced by SSAB inOxelösund. Meanwhile, finite element method analyses were applied in order to investigatethe static strength behavior of such weldments under uniaxial tension. The welding parameters which were selected as variables are:  Heat input Weld joint geometry Filler metal When weld metal is undermatching in strength levels than the base material, by applyingtension the soft weld metal begins to deform before parent metal. At that point thedeformation of resulted soft zone, including the weld metal and the heat affected zone, ishindered by high strength parent metal. Thus, uniaxial stress caused by uniaxial load isconverted to multiaxial stress. This conversion in tension results in increase in the staticstrength of weldment. The increase in strength is emphasized by increase in the width of thewelded joint while the thickness of the plate is kept as constant. After experiments and performing FEM studies, it was revealed that the static strength ofWeldox 960 welded joints approaches towards the tensile strength of parent metal by increasein the width of the weldment. In Weldox 1100 joints; a slight increase in tensile properties ofthe weldments, when the width of the sample increases, was observed.

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