,

~.i'".J

MarineStructures10 (1997) 353-362 1997 Elsevier Science Limited. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain P I I : S 0 9 5 1- 8 3 3 9 ( 9 6 ) 0 0 0 i 8 - 4 0951-8339/97/$17.00 + .00

ELSEVIER

Interfacial Toughness for the Shipboard Aluminum/Steel Structural Transition Joint

R. M. Chao, J. M. Y a n g & S. R. Lay
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, T a i n a n , T a i w a n 701, R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a (Received 21 O c t o b e r 1996)

ABSTRACT This work studies the interfacial toughness of the shipboard Al/Steel structural transition joint ( S T J). Instead of using three or four different material properties to represent a real STJ material, only the aluminum and the steel properties are used, and the bi-material interfacial problem is considered in the analysis. With the compact tensile test and the four point bending test, the toughness of the A1/Steel interface can be found. It is found that the interfacial toughness increases as the mode II (Shearing mode) increases. The toughness of the STJ interfaces drop sharply once the heating temperature exceeds 400(7. 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Key words." structural transition joint, interfacial strength, crack, fracture toughness, critical energy released rate

INTRODUCTION
The explosion bonding process for jointing both similar and dissimilar metals was discovered by Du Pont in the late 1950's. It is found in the laboratory, as well in practical use, that the explosion-bonded structural transition joint (STJ) provided a fast and efficient medium to attach two different metals with satisfactory corrosive properties. In the shipbuilding industry, the development toward lightweight and fast-speed vessels uses a great number of the Aluminum/Steel structural transition joints to attach the aluminium superstructure to the steel hull. In this arrangement, the total weight of the ship is reduced due to the lighter aluminium superstructure. However, the welding procedures of the STJ material cause more problems
353

354

R. M. Chao, J. M. Yang, S. R. Lay

than may be expected. Sometimes, disbonding of the STJ occurs during construction and extra man-hours are needed to remove the disbonded STJ. There are also a few reported disbondings which occurred in service. The mechanical properties of the Al/Steel structure transition joint were first reported by Mckenney and Banker[l] in 1971. In their report, the Ram tensile testing, fatigue testing, corrosion testing and explosive water hammer testing were performed to collect the related material data. In the nineties, Gaines and Banker[2] reported that the tri-metallic transition joint (adding an extra strip of titanium alloy interlayer to the classical ST J) can withstand higher stress levels, and it can resist a higher interpass temperature during the welding process. With this strip of titanium alloy, the welding process is much easier than before, but the price of the tri-metallic transition joint increases drastically. We realize that the use of the transition joint has to pass certain minimum requirements, such as MIL-J-24445. What is in hand for the working guidelines of the structural transition joint is given by Akira[3]. In his report, concise but adequate information is given for the use of the STJ in Japan. When looking closely at the STJ material, it is easy to find some tiny holes or flaws which exist within the interface of aluminum and steel. Besides that, the normal butt joint design requires hammer peening the unwelded gap to insure watertightness. This process creates a macroscopic crack in the structural transition joint. From the view point of fracture mechanics, unfortunately, we are not able to receive any fracture report for the structure transition joint. Therefore, it is our aim to provide the fracture property of the STJ materials, and hopefully, to provide some insight to the disbond problem of the STJ material.

REVIEW OF THE AL/STEEL I N T E R F A C I A L STRENGTH The Ram tensile test was reperformed to verify that the structural transition joint, after cutting, received by the shipyard still had the required interfacial strength. To simulate the welding process, the STJ materials were heated up for 15 minutes in the oven to the required temperature and cooling down in the air in total of three times. The test results show similar results as in Mckenney and Banker[l], see Fig. 1. This confirms that our test procedure for simulating the welding environment is similar to that of Mckenney and Banker[l]. The same test method is then used for the fracture toughness testing. For the tensile test, the STJ material was welded to 5083 aluminum and SM41 steel plates in the China Shipbuilding Corp., Kaohsiung Shipyard. The thickness ratio of the STJ and the aluminum plate follows the rule of 4:1. Then the welded plates were cut into the shape of the standard test

Interfacial toughness for a STJ

355

200.00
B ~dl~ll~tlfsce A
I IOO P ~ e ~ / A S I 6 0r.55 8ted

150.00

r,

100.00

b~

50.00
/x A

0.00 0.00
i

i i I i i i i

i I i i i i i i i i l l l l l

IIEIII

200.00

400.00

600.00

Tempetature (C)
Fig. 1. Ram tensile test of Aluminum/Steel interfacial strength as a function of temperature.

specimen with STJ material in the middle by a high pressure water knife cutter. During the test, the specimen broke at the heated affected zone of the aluminum plate in most of the cases. The high pressure water knife cutter produces so little heat while cutting the AI/STJ/Steel plate that the strength of the structural transition joint will not be influenced by this particular cutting method. It is now a permissible cutting method for the shipyard to cut the explosion bonded bi-material plate into a desire shape without reducing its strength.

I N T E R F A C I A L F R A C T U R E MECHANICS In the following, a brief introduction to the interfacial fracture mechanics with regard to the structural transition joint will be presented. Because the thickness, of the intermediate material within the STJ is relatively small if compared with the A1/Steel structure, the analysis is based on the interfacial crack of two isotropic elastic materials. Considering the loading condition of Fig. 2, the interfacial crack is under tension a~y(mode I) and shearing trxy(mode II) stresses at infinity, and the complex stress intensity factor, K, at the crack tip can be written as (see Rice[4], Suo and Hutchinson[5])
O9

K = (ryy + taxy)(1 + 2ie)v/-~ = Kl + iK2

O9

O0

(1)

where e :: ~ l n ( ~ ' ] , a is the half length of the total crack, # is the shear 3 0 for plane stress, and the modulus, x = 9 - ,~o ior plane strain, x = ~-~-~

356

R. M. Chao, J. M. Yang, S. R. Lay

72
Fig. 2. Loadingconditionsof the interfacialcrack problem. subscript 1, 2 represents the upper and lower materials of the STJ material, respectively. K1 is the mode I stress intensity factor and/2 is the mode II stress intensity factor. The energy release rate, G per unit length of crack extension at the crack tip, can be written as[5] G1 (1 +K1 1 ~2~2)K~. 16 cosh 2 rc~ /~l + (2)

Based on the above formula and following the thickness requirement of the ASTM E399-72 compact tension testing procedure for plane strain fracture toughness, we are able to test the specimen with a different slant angle, ff of the STJ material. The critical energy released rate, (also known as the toughness) of the A1/Steel interface for various loading orientations is then found. At each testing, an initial notch in the specimen has to be created by the fatigue loading process. Unfortunately, all the specimens with slant angle of 45 or greater failed at the weld of the aluminum side during the pre-crack stage. According to the results of the Ram tensile testing, welding of the AI/ Steel STJ material suggests a thickness ratio of aluminum to STJ of 1:4. This particular rule is obviously inadequate for the shearing dominate cases. In shearing pronounced cases, it is the welding of the aluminum plate which produces problems rather the STJ material itself. To test the STJ in a larger stress ratio of shearing to tension, we use the symmetric four point bending method suggested by Charalambides al.[6] Considering the symmetric four point bending test of a center notched specimen, see Fig. 3, the energy release rate of the interfacial crack tip can be written as

Gc

et

G--Me(I-2)( 1 )
2E2 ~-~ (3)

Interfacial toughness for a STJ

357

........... I

....... ..................... L J

Fig. 3. Notched symmetric four point bending specimen of the STJ material.
where
el
_

g2(1 -- 0~) r h~
--, =

h3
I 2

h~
+2hlh2

4(ffh + h2) 2 +2h2)'

E is the Young's modulus and t> is the Poisson ratio. This symmetric loading condition provides a mode I to mode II stress intensity factor phase angle of q> near 45 degrees in the tensile test, where q~ = t a n - l ( K 2 / K l ) . Notice the difference between the loading phase angle ~b and ~o. These are discussed in detail in [4]. With the tensile and symmetric four point bending test, the critical energy release rate of the A1/Steel interface within the structural transition joint can thus be determined from various loading conditions. Before any fracture test began, a sharp crack tip has to be created in order to avoid errors from different crack tip configurations. This is accomplished by an initial mechanical notch made by a regular machine saw, and then the specimen is fatigue loaded with minimum to maximum stress ra~tio between - 1 and 0.1 (0.1 in our experiments). The pre-crack loading cycles are within 104,-,,106 cycles. This will ensure a sharp crack tip at the interface. A small drop of red dye is put into the crack for identifying the actual size of the crack after the fracture test. For the symmetric four point bending test, the numerical calculation of the energy released rate given by Charalambides e t al.[6] suggests a steady state of energy release rate as long as the interfacial crack is confined within the two inner supports. That is, the critical energy release rate of the STJ is nearly irrelevant to the size of the crack. Therefore, the initial crack is created by cutting the STJ strip near the aluminum/steel interface, and then the three point bending fatigue loading is used to generate the horizontal interfacial crack. The fracture testing results show a steady state crack extension under constant forces, and thus verify the numerical calculations of Charalambides e t a/.[6]

358

R. M. Chao, J. M. Yang, S. R. Lay

RESULTS A N D DISCUSSIONS A total of four different Al/Steel shipboard structural transition joints from different vendors are tested during this project: (1) Dynaweld AB of Sweden, with cross-section 32-416.1mm 2 (2)Detacouple of Du Pont, USA with cross-section 35x20-2mm 2 (A material) and 35x31-4mm 2 (C material), (3) Tri-material STJ with titanium interlayer, with cross-section 40x22.4mm 2, Explosive Fabricators, Inc., USA. The tensile specimen with Dynaweld STJ was tested, and the results support the criterion of plate to STJ thickness ratio of 1:4. Fig. 1 is the Ram tensile testing results for material C, which is similar to that of Mckenney and Banker[l]. Therefore, the same heat treatment procedure was used for the fracture test in order to find the influence of heat input during welding to the toughness of the structural transition joint. The aluminum and the steel plates were welded to the Detacouple with two different STJ thicknesses by the workers at China Shipbuilding Corp, Kaohsiung Shipyard. In order to test the specimen with various loading orientations, these specimen are cut from the plate by a high pressure water knife cutter with different STJ orientation angles (~k equals 0 , 15, 30 or 45). Thus, the critical energy release rate for different stress ratios of mode I (Tensile) to mode II (shearing) loading conditions can be tested by a simple tensile test procedure. In tensile dominant testing environments (STJ orientation less than or equal to 30 degrees), a pre crack is generated successfully by the fatigue loading, and the fracture toughness test operates well as expected. But for the last testing configuration (ff = 45), instead of at the A1/Steel interface, unpredicted crack growth always happens at the welding zone of the aluminum side. This indicates that the shearing force causes more problems to the welded structure in the welding zone than the tension force does for the current design criterion. The associated fracture testing then is performed on the unwelded STJ strip by the four point bending test. The results are shown in Fig. 4, and it shows that the Al/Steel interfacial toughness increases drastically as ~ increases above 30 degrees. As the shear force increases, the wavelike shape of the STJ interface prevents the interface from tearing by interlocking the aluminum and the steel materials. The same reason causes the toughness of the interface to increase at larger shear force conditions, and the STJ is more likely to be broken at the aluminium side of welding. Unwelded STJ of Dynaweld AB is also used in the symmetric four point bending test in order to realize the temperature effect on the aluminium/steel interfacial toughness. The heat treatment procedure is as described in the previous section, and the testing results are shown in Fig. 5. Testing results showed that the Dynaweld material has a lower value of interfacial toughness at room temperature than it has when heat treated under 400C. Once heat treatment temperature rises above 450C, the A1/steel interfacial

Interfacial toughness for a S T J

359

5.00
"3-

: Material A : Material C

fb

4.00 3.00
0

2.00
q)

1.00

0.00 0.00

15.00

30.00

45.00

Phase Angle p
Fig. 4. Critical energy released rate, Gc, of the structural transition joint at the A1/Steel interface as a function of the stress intensity factor phase angle q).

6.00
Intes:Fece ]Pn,cta~ R e i / m e e & Tempt J.~

5.00

4.00 3.00 2.00

iiiiiiililJla~ll;~loolJiitnil, 1.00 150.00 300.00 0.00 ,,aal

450.00

T~ua~erature (C) Fig. 5. Critical energy released rate, Gc, of the structural transition joint at the A1/Steel interface as a function of the highest welding temperature.

360

R. M. Chao, J. M. Yang, S. R. Lay

toughness, Gc, suddenly drops from 4.8KJ/m 2 to 2KJ/m 2. A similar drop of interfacial strength can be seen from the previous Ram tensile test, see Fig. 1. When comparing this particular temperature, where the strength and the toughness of the interface starts to drop, with the recrystalization temperature of the aluminium (around 80C) and the steel (around 450C), we conclude that the recrystalization of the iron structure controls the strength, and the toughness, of the aluminium and steel interface. We also find that the interface has a different pattern for the Dynaweld and Detacouple STJ materials. The Dynaweld has a denser but lower wave height of the wave form of the A1/Steel interface than that of Detacouple. Although the interfacial wave form looks different, we are not aware of any particular changes of the mechanical properties of the two structural transition joints according to our experimental results Till now, we have not said anything on the structural transition joint containing a strip of titanium interlayer made by Explosive Fabricators, Inc. During our experiment, this material was also tested by the tensile fracture test, but all the testings failed at the welding side of the aluminum plate. Even when we cut a extremely large crack at the A1/Ti interface, the specimen was still precracked, and the fracture test was not successful. By looking into the interface of the specimen, we find that the interface does not fracture because of the high ductile property. The existence of the titanium interlayer allows the crack tip to blunt, the load is taken by the STJ again, and finally the specimen breaks at the weld of the aluminum side. Similar results for a

7OO

v.,w

0,- 1.0 (IO'/m*)

~,I:: ~
| "

0,- 1,2 (KJ/m s)

. . . . . . . . .

II::l
~\\~

2 G~- 1.4 ( l . ~ n )

--

o-1.~,~')

~~ ' ,~

5OO ,oo 3OO

200

, I,
0.0
4.0 8.0 12.0 16.0 20.0

c'~i~ical~

2a.(,,,,,)

Fig. 6. Critical energy released rate of structural transition joint in terms of design stress and maximum allowable crack size.

Area for peening

Area for peening

8-1Omm

Insertionof a cylindricalrod (b)HAmmer Peening with a cylinder pin insertion

(a)ttAmmer Peening process

Fig. 7. Postprocess of the butt weld of two structural transition joints.

362

R. M. Chao, J. M. Yang, S. R. Lay

tensile test was also reported by Akira[3]. We conclude that the tri-material structural transition joint has the highest interfacial toughness amongst the four STJ materials we have tested. The mechanical properties of this material are the best, and the use of the tri-material perhaps becomes a simple economical problem. From the designer's point of view, the fracture toughness can be interpreted as the design stress and crack size, see Fig. 6. Suppose that the 1:4 thickness ratio of the aluminium plate to STJ is used, and the design stress of the aluminium plate is 300MPa. Thus, the structural transition joint is designed to resist maximum loads of 75MPa. Considering a large aluminium/steel structure containing a centered crack at the interface of the STJ material, the maximum allowable interfacial crack size (2at) is about 13mm (from Fig. 6 by assuming that Gc is 1KJ/m2). When butt jointing of the two STJ pieces occurs, it usually happens at the corner of the structure or two blocks to be welded together, either the hammer peening (Fig. 7.a) or the rod inserted hammer peening process after welding (Fig. 7.b) can easily create a macroscopic crack with the same order of critical crack length. Therefore, work under these conditions has to be extremely careful in order not to break the structural transition joint due to exceeding the size of the gap between two structural transition joints. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank the China Shipbuilding Corp., Kaohsiung Shipyard for the support of this project. REFERENCES 1. McKenney, C. R. and Banker, J. G., Explosion bonded metals for marine structural application. Marine Technology, 1971, 8(3), 285-292. 2. Gaines, E. and Banker, J., Shipboard aluminum/steel welded transition joints: evaluation and improvement. Journal of Ship Production, 1991, 7(3), 188-199. 3. Akira, Kubota, The structural transition joint for the steel hull and the aluminum superstructure. Technical report, Asahi Chemical Industry Co., Ltd, 19XX (in Japanese). 4. Rice, J.R., Elastic fracture mechanics concepts for interfacial cracks. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 1988, 55, 98-103. 5. Suo, Z. and Hutchinson, J. W., Sandwich test specimens for measuring interface crack toughness. Material Science and Engineering, 1989, A107, 135-143. 6. Charalambides, P. G., Lund, J., Evans, A. H. and McMecking, R. M., A test specimen for determining the fracture resistance of bimaterial interface. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 1989, 56, 77-82.