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Engineering
Materials and Chemical Engineering
Why weld joints are stronger than the base material itself?
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[QUOTE="ianchristie, post: 6201478, member: 448177"] In a previous life I was a bicycle frame builder. At the time most handbuilt bikes used steel tubing. One of the distinguishing features of bicycle tubing sets which set them apart from aircraft tubing was that the tubes were "butted". For the uninitiated this essentially meant that the wall thickness varied to add strength to the area where the tubes would be joined at their ends and to reduce weight in the middle section. Most steel and aluminum alloys are heat treated / artificially aged / work hardened to some extent to improve desired properties of strength, hardness, ductility, toughness or whatever is appropriate for the purpose. The addition of heat in the joining process usually detracts from the effect of the previous treatments. (But not always. ) Aluminum alloy 6061 is solution heat treated to a T6 temper and artificially aged to create a high strength alloy suitable for MIG or TIG welding with 4043 filler. If you use plain gauge tubing (not butted) to build your frame the nett result will be that if the wall thickness at the joint is sufficient to compensate for the welding, it will be thicker and heavier than needed in the mid section of the tube. Factory built frames overcome this problem by heat treating their frames back to the T6 state after fabrication. If you buy a 6061 bicycle frame tubeset from a company such as Reynolds it will be designed on the assumption that you are going to heat treat the completed frame. As an alternative you might like to consider buying a Reynolds 853 set. This is a steel tubeset which air-hardens to a higher strength after brazing. Depending on your location you may be able to find a local supplier who can sell you a tubeset from another specialist company. The tubeset makers can supply you with all the technical information and advice you could possibly need. They are paranoid about inexperienced frame builders using their material to make frames that break. [/QUOTE]
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Why weld joints are stronger than the base material itself?
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