Structural Impact Strength of Welded I-Profiles

When a weldment suffers structural impact, the base and filler metals ductility is one of the main features. However, despite the increasing use of high strength low alloy steels (HSLA), this factor is not always considered and it can result in global and/or localized instabilities within a structure. So, the main objective of this work was to compare the behavior to structural impact of welded I-profiles, made with ASTM A36 and EN10149-2 S700MC, a regular and a HSLA structural steel, respectively, using GMAW process and AWS ER70S-6 and AWS ER110S-G as filler metals, which produce weld metals with great differences in tensile strength and ductility. Besides, all weldments were made with both filler metals and the profiles with or without stiffening reinforcements (on the web), keeping the original finishing of the fillet welds. Among the main results, the behavior of the material with high strength (EN10149-2 S700MC) when subjected to dynamic loading, have shown fracture on the upper flange, with crack lengths significantly greater than those presented by ASTM A36 steel, under the same welding and loading conditions. Furthermore, the presence of vertical reinforcement acts as a stiffening of the structure and ends up transferring the load to the opposite flange of the profile, however without nullifying the fracture condition in the high-strength material.