High Strength Consumables for High Dilution Submerged Arc Welding

Current requirements for high strength pipelines are placing extreme demands on welding consumables. These applications include strain based pipelines using X80 as well as traditionally designed pipelines using X100 and even X120 base materials. Traditional procedures used in the pipemills for both the seam weld and the jointer weld utilize a SAW process with very high dilution and high heat inputs. Existing consumables are not able to meet the minimum strength requirements under these conditions. A project was undertaken to develop an alloy system that could meet these requirements while still allowing the use of traditional welding processes. Testing results with this new consumable are presented and future work is described. This alloy system may also prove useful in other high dilution applications where high strength is required.