Tensile Behavior of Electron Beam-Welded and Post-Weld Vacuum-Annealed Nb-10% Hf-1% Ti Refractory Alloy Weldments

Nb-10% Hf-1% Ti refractory alloy is a high performance material extensively used for high temperature applications. Electron beam welding is one of the most widely used techniques to join refractory and reactive alloys. Bigger sizes of nozzles for rocket propulsion applications can be either made through deep drawing and flow turning route or by roll bending and welding route both using sheets/plates as input material for fabrication. The latter is a more economical option for mass production of the hardware using such exotic and expensive alloys. In view of this, both as-welded (AW) coupon and weld plus post-weld vacuum-annealed (AW + VA) coupon have been prepared to study their mechanical behavior. It has been observed that tensile strength and ductility have not been reduced in both these conditions vis-a-vis the base metal, confirming weld efficiency of the alloy to be ~ 100%. Microhardness is found to be 150-160 VHN in the base metal and 200-225 VHN in the weld fusion zone in AW condition, which became uniform (145-155 VHN) throughout the weldment in AW + VA condition. Microstructure of the weldment in AW condition is found to be consisting of grains solidified by epitaxial mode from base metal toward the weld centre. In AW + VA condition, improvement in tensile elongation is observed, which is found to be due to the presence of homogenized grains/more uniform microstructure near the heat-affected zone as compared to the steep gradient in grain size in different zones in the weld in AW condition.