Environmental regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are getting stricter, and the demand for replacing the fuel of ships with eco-friendly fuels instead of heavy oil in the shipbuilding and marine industries is increasing. Among eco-friendly fuels, LNG (liquefied natural gas) is currently the most popular fuel. This is because it is an alternative that can avoid the IMO's environmental regulations by replacing fuel. In PART 1, as a basic study of laser welding of high manganese steel materials, a fiber laser bead-on-plate experiment was conducted using nitrogen protective gas, and the effect of each factor on the penetration shape was analyzed through cross-sectional observation. In PART II, argon and helium shielding gases, not the nitrogen shielding gas used in PART I, were tested under the same experimental conditions and the effect of the shielding gas on penetration during laser welding was conducted.

Environmental regulations of the IMO (International Maritime Organization) are becoming more and more conservative. In order to respond to IMO, the demand for replacing the fuel of ships with eco-friendly fuels instead of conventional heavy oil is increasing in the shipbuilding and offshore industries. Among eco-friendly fuels, LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) is currently the most popular fuel. LNG is characteristically liquefied at -163 degrees, and at this time, its volume is reduced to 1/600, so it is transported in a cryogenic liquefied state for transport efficiency. A tank for storing this should have sufficient mechanical/thermal performance at cryogenic temperatures, and among them, high manganese steel is known as a material with high price competitiveness and satisfying these performance. However, high manganese steel has a limitation in that the mechanical performance of the filler metal is lower than that of the base metal called ‘under matching’. In this study, to overcome this limitation, a basic study was conducted to apply the fiber laser welding method without filler metal to high manganese steel. To obtain efficient welding conditions, in this study, bead-on-plate welding was performed by changing the fiber laser welding speed and output using helium shielding gas, and the effect of each factor on the penetration shape was analyzed through cross-sectional observation.

As the International Maritime Organization (IMO)'s environmental regulations on ship emissions become strict, the demand for ships powered by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is rapidly increasing worldwide. Compared to other materials, high manganese steel has the advantages of superior impact toughness at cryogenic temperatures, a small coefficient of thermal expansion, and low cost of base materials and welding rods. However, there is a limitation in that the mechanical properties of the filler material are lower than the base material having excellent mechanical properties. In this study, after performing a high manganese steel laser butt welding experiment, the welding performance was evaluated through mechanical property (yield strength, tensile strength, hardness, cryogenic impact strength) tests of the weld. As a result, it was observed that the yield strength and tensile strength of the high manganese steel laser welding part was 97.5% and 93.5% of the base metal respectively. Also the hardness of welding part was 84.2% of the base metal. The cryogenic impact strength of the welding part and the base metal were over the 27J, the level of welding part is 76.1% of the base metal.

As demand for eco-friendly energy increases, demand for natural gas and Liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage technologies continues to increase. LNG is a cryogenic environment with a temperature of -163°C, so ordinary metals cannot be used due to brittleness. Accordingly, IGC Code designates the cryogenic materials such as Invar, STS304L, Al5083-0, and High Manganese Steel. For fabricating those materials, research on welding possibility is the most important. Thus this study focused on the possibility of laser welding of the cryogenic materials. The weldability of High Manganese Steel was researched in this paper, the shape and the dimensions of the beads after bead on plate (BOP) welding were observed. The experiment was conducted on a total of 25 cases with laser power and welding speed of 5 cases each, and the width, height, and penetration of the beads were confirmed. It was confirmed that the paramenter of bead increased linearly with the laser power, and the paramenters of bead increased linearly with decreasing welding speed. Based on this study, high manganese steel can be applied in various industries by applying it to butt welding.

In this work, a PAM(Plasma Assisted Machining) technology was applied to milling of high manganese steel, a typical hard-to-machine materials. For this purpose, a transferred type of arc plasma torch was coupled with a 3-axis milling machine, then, used to heat and soften the surface of a high manganese steel plate in front of a 16 mm end mill with 2 blades and hard coatings. From the test results, it was concluded that the cutting load can be significantly reduced down to 57 % by plasma heating with the power level of 3.9 kW, ensuring the improvement of tool life and surface roughness in milling of high manganese work pieces.

This paper presents a study of the tensile properties of austenitic high-manganese steel specimens with different grain sizes. Although the stacking fault energy, calculated using a modified thermodynamic model, slightly decreased with increasing grain size, it was found to vary in a range of 23.4 mJ/m2 to 27.1 mJ/m2. Room-temperature tensile test results indicated that the yield and tensile strengths increased; the ductility also improved as the grain size decreased. The increase in the yield and tensile strengths was primarily attributed to the occurrence of mechanical twinning, as well as to the grain refinement effect. On the other hand, the improvement of the ductility is because the formation of deformation-induced martensite is suppressed in the high-manganese steel specimen with small grain size during tensile testing. The deformationinduced martensite transformation resulting from the increased grain size can be explained by the decrease in stacking fault energy or in shear stress required to generate deformation-induced martensite transformation.

The effect of retained and reversed austenite on the damping capacity in high manganese stainless steel with two phases of martensite and austenite was studied. The two phase structure of martensite and retained austenite was obtained by deformation for various degrees of deformation, and a two phase structure of martensite and reverse austenite was obtained by reverse annealing treatment for various temperatures after 70 % cold rolling. With the increase in the degree of deformation, the retained austenite and damping capacity rapidly decreased, with an increase in the reverse annealing temperature, the reversed austenite and damping capacity rapidly increased. With the volume fraction of the retained and reverse austenite, the damping capacity increased rapidly. At same volume of retained and reversed austenite, the damping capacity of the reversed austenite was higher than the retained austenite. Thus, the damping capacity was affected greatly by the reversed austenite.