Welding Procedure Qualification Standards for Stainless Steel for corrosion resistance service

What exactle are the corrosion resistance requirements?
There's no link between PQR testing and corrosion resistance.

I have written PQRs that also contained required corrosion testing.
You have to know this and develop it yourself.

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Stainless steel is used for the cargo hold of chemical ships, and corrosion resistance is necessary. In ISO 15614-1, corrosion testing can be used as an additional test.However, is range of Welding Procedure Qualification for Stainless Steel still possible according to ISO 15614-1，including the parent material, material thickness，welding procedure, the welding consumables and so on?

If range of welding procedure qualification for Stainless Steel for corrosion resistance service cannot be clarified and corrosion tests are required for each welding procedure, then there are too many welding procedure qualification tests that need to be done

Thank you.

I have also written WPS's qualified with corrosion testing, most often to ASTM G-48. I have also required welders to be qualified with corosion tessting to make sure they welded to the WPS.

Depends on the type of stainless steel. G48 A for duplex, super duplex, and super austenitic. Maybe ASTM A 262 for austenitic. How corrosion testing impacts the need for repeated qualification is dependent upon how the end user deems the essential variables to have an effect.

Steve Jones
Corrosion Management Consultant


All answers are personal opinions only and are in no way connected with any employer.

Thank you all for your professional responses.
For welding procedure qualification for Stainless Steel for corrosion resistance service, which are essential variables, which are supplementary essential variables, and which are nonessential variables?

For example, for the base material, is the welding procedure qualification using 316L applicable to welding 304L stainless steel?vice versa？

Range of material thickness, range of qualification for butt joints/fillet welds, range of welding positions,range of type of joint, range of heat input, range of welding consumables，etc. still can be covered in accordance with ISO 15614-1？

If there are no standards for welding procedure qualification for Stainless Steel for corrosion resistance service, a welding process qualification test is required for each variable, the amount of experimentation would be too large.

Thank you.

A note, with duplex you are often doing both A923 and G48.
They look similar but are very different tests.
And yes, in duplex I require that every welder be qualified to the corrosion tests.
If you have corrosion performance limitations, you will likely need to have tighter ranges of allowed practice then in a common procedure.
If everything is 304L and/or 316L then you can probably simplify the criteria and only have a few options.
This is just an addition to a standard procedure.

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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed