Low Transformation Temperature Welding Materials: Properties, Weldability, and Active Applications

This valuable reference for advanced students and practicing engineers provides a comprehensive overview of low transformation temperature (LTT) welding materials, detailing their design, properties, and weldability, and demonstrating their applications in preventing fatigue and improving corrosion performance in welded structures.

Through this book, readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of how LTT actively controls welding residual stress to improve the fatigue life of welded structures and raise corrosion resistance. This book first provides a review of LTT welding materials, addressing the design of chemical compositions for LTT welding materials, the properties and weldability of LTT welding materials, compressive residual stress, and stress concentration, while providing practical application examples of LTT welding materials for preventing fatigue cracking. The authors provide experimental and numerically simulated data, photos, graphs, and tables to illustrate the information within this book and facilitate readers’ understanding. Last, this book discusses practical applications such as the successful prevention of fatigue cracks at the toe of fillet welds (such as boxed fillet welds in ship structures) and surface coating using wire-arc additive manufacturing to improve corrosion performance. These application descriptions are supported by an appendix that supplies digital data of LTT material properties and finite element mesh data for butt and fillet welds. This practical information will allow readers to apply this knowledge in real-world scenarios and also develop and extend the number of applications for LTT welding materials, contributing to improved corrosion performance in welded structures.

Upper undergraduate and postgraduate students will find this a valuable resource for their learning as it provides additional information to supplement course materials. Practitioners will also benefit from the practical information including simulation and real-world data that will benefit their daily work.

Ninshu Ma was born in 1961 and received Ph.D. in 1994 at The University of Osaka, Japan. He is a professor of Joining and Welding Research Institute, and the director of East-Asian Center of Academic Initiatives at The University of Osaka, Japan. He is associate editor of Ships and Offshore Structure, editor of China Welding, associate editor-in-chief of Advanced Materials Joining. He was the editor-in-chief of The Journal of the Japan Society of Technology of Plasticity. He has published more than 300 journal articles and 6 books/chapters. He has chaired/co-chaired several international conferences. His research interests include computational welding mechanics and metal forming mechanics, development of computing/measuring methods and material constitutive models for various fusion/solid-state joining methods, as well as additive manufacturing.

Kazuo Hiraoka was born in 1948 and received his Dr.-Eng. in 1997 from The University of Osaka, Japan. He was a guest (2016-2024) and visiting (2009-2016) professor of Joining and Welding Research Institute at The University of Osaka, Japan. Until 2009, he was a leader of Welding Metallurgy Group at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). He has published more than 100 journal articles and 3 books/chapters. His research interests include diagnostics of welding arc, development of arc welding process, and welding technology for 780-980 MPa class high strength steels with LTT materials.

Zhongyuan Feng (born in 1988) received Ph.D. in 2021 at The University of Osaka, Japan. He has published more than 15 journal articles. His research interests include weldability of metallic materials, residual stress and fatigue performance of welded joints, and friction stir welding technology for high-melting-point materials.

Hiroshi Yajima was born at Tokyo in 1936 and received Dr. Eng. in 1981 at The University of Tokyo, Japan. He worked at Technical Headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. from 1960 through 1994. He was a professor at Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University from 1994 through 2000, and he was a professor at Graduate School of Engineering, Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science from 2000 through 2015. At present, he is an emeritus professor at Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science. He has published about 500 journal articles. His research interests include fatigue strength and unstable fracture strength of large welded structures.