Welding and the behavior of the weldments are important, since welding of high strength low alloy (HSLA) steels is a conventional method for manufacturing industrial parts. This work conducts a comparative investigation of microstructural characteristics and mechanical properties for joints of 16-mm-thick HSLA Q890 steel produced by multi-layer multi-pass shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) with filler wire and single-layer autogenous laser beam welding (LBW). The mechanical properties of the welded joints were assessed in terms of tensile and impact using butt joints. The results show that tensile failure occurred in the base metal during the tensile tests for most of the trials. The ultimate tensile strength and percent elongation of the LBW welded joint (973.5 MPa and 10%) are higher than those of the SMAW joint (951 MPa and 2.9%) due to the filler filling process of the SMAW process. The Charpy impact energy of the weld metal (16.4 J and 15.1 J) is lower than that of the heat-affected zone (18.5 J and 19.5 J) in the LBW joint and the SMAW joint.
Keywords: HSLA steel; laser welding; microstructural characterization; thick plate.