Research of condition metal in welded joint by deformation and corrosion parameters relief on the surface

At industrial enterprises in building structures and equipment one can see corrosion damage, as well as damage accumulated during operation period. The areas of stress concentration are welded joints as their structure is heterogeneous. From the point of view of the scale hierarchy, the welded joint represents the welded and base metal zones at the meso-macrolevel, the weld zone, the thermal zone, the base metal at the micro-mesolevel, the grain constituents at the nano-microlevel. Borders are the stress concentrators at different scale levels, thus they becomes the most dangerous places of metal structure. Modeling by the molecular dynamics method at the atomic level has shown nanocracks initiation in triple junctions of grain boundaries and on the ledges of the grain boundaries. Due to active development of nanotechnology, it became possible to evaluate the state of the weld metal at the nanoscale, where irreversible changes take place from the very beginning. Existing methods of nondestructive testing can detect damage only at the meso- and macrolevel. Modern equipment makes it possible to use other methods of control and approaches. For example, according to GOST R55046-2012 and R57223-2016, the analysis of the parameters of the surface projection deformation performed by confocal laser scanning microscopy should be taken into account when the evaluation of state of metal pipelines is carried out. However, there is a problem to monitore it due to various factors affecting the surface during operation. The paper proposes an additional method to estimate the state of weld metal at any stage of deformation that uses 3D analysis of the parameters of the «artificial» corrosion relief of surface. During the operation period changes in the stress-strain state and structure of the metal take place, as the result the character and depth of etching of the grains of the structural components and their boundaries change too. Evaluation of the measurement results of the etching relief 3D surface reveals dangerous signs of the development of the critical state of metal on the nanoscale. The relationship between the method of corrosion surface relief and known methods studying the deformation relief of the surface and microhardness is presented.