Effect of welding processes and consumables on high cycle fatigue life of high strength, quenched and tempered steel joints

Austenitic stainless steel (ASS) welding consumables are traditionally used for welding quenched and tempered steels as they have higher solubility for hydrogen in austenitic phase. An attempt was made in this investigation to explore an alternate consumable to replace expensive ASS consumables. Austenitic stainless steel and low hydrogen ferritic steel were used to fabricate the joints by shielded metal arc welding and flux cored arc welding processes. The joints fabricated using low hydrogen ferritic steel consumables showed superior fatigue performance than the joints fabricated using ASS consumables.