Evaluation and Repair of Wrought Iron and - Purdue e-Pubs ...

56completed, but before the surface was ground flush to make the welds blend into theoriginal eyebar connection.Eyebar B was modeled to be a worst case scenario of section loss due to corrosionin an eyebar end connection. In this eyebar, half the thickness of the original eyebar’smaterial was removed from the center two and a half inches around the hole andperpendicular to the direction of loading. Figure 3.28 shows Eyebar B after this materialwas removed and prepared for welding.Once this material was removed, the area simulating corrosion needed to be filledwith weld material. To do this an E7024 SMAW 1/8” diameter welding rod was utilizedwith a DC reverse polarity electric source, similar to Eyebar A. An initial pass aroundthe hole in the eyebar and along the open edges were placed to create a dam for the fillermaterial, as can been seen in Figure 3.29.Once the initial passes were placed, filler passes were then placed in the open areain the direction of loading of the eyebar to reduce heat distortion. In between passes thetemperature of the base metal was also monitored to ensure the metal was not to hot toweld and to reduce the amount of heat distortion in the metal. It was necessary to takebreaks and allow the metal cool between sets of passes. The welds were also cleanedusing a chisel hammer and wire brush in between each pass. Figures 3.30 and 3.31 showthe eyebar end connection after all the welding was completed.As can been seen in Figure 3.31 there was a slight amount of heat distortion andcurvature in the wrought iron eyebar connection from the filler weld. To straighten thispiece, the eyebar was heated until it was red hot, as seen in Figure 3.32, and thenstraightened by striking the eyebar with large hammer. The color of the eyebar wassimilar to the color of the iron that was heat straightened in the tension testing couponsand therefore at the adequate temperature to straighten the iron without inducing