The Design Provisions of the New AWS Structural Welding Code – Titanium

Abstract:

The American Welding Society has developed its first welding design code for titanium alloy welded structures, through its consensus standards process and the work of many volunteers,. Defining the provisions of this new code required collecting and summarizing both strength and fatigue data for titanium structural welds. The design provisions were based on these data, but only in context of other provisions of the code in areas of welding procedure qualification, fabrication, and inspection. For instance, the allowable imperfection sizes found on inspection had to be correlated with the expected fatigue performance of imperfect welds. Test data from welds in the primary structural alloy Ti-6Al-4V are described for several weld configurations, both with and without welding imperfections.