Weldable F1554-55 Anchor Bolts

F1554 Grade 55 anchor bolts are not always weldable. The weldability of Grade 55 is a supplemental requirement referred to as “S1”, which must be specified. According to the ASTM F1554 specification under section S1.1, “This supplemental section, by chemical composition restrictions and by a carbon equivalent formula, provides assurance of weldability.” For F1554 Grade 55 to be considered weldable, it must conform to the following chemical requirements:

In addition to the above requirements, the material must also have a carbon equivalent (CE) which meets certain requirements.  One of these carbon equivalent requirements is that for alloy or low-alloy steel, the carbon equivalent shall not exceed 0.45%.  The way to calculate this is to plug the chemical composition figures for a given heat lot of steel into the following formula:

For carbon steel, the carbon equivalent cannot exceed 0.40% using the following formula:

When an F1554 Grade 55 anchor bolt has been specified to meet the supplemental requirement “S1”, the fastener must then be designated by a white paint mark on the side of the bar near the end to be encased in concrete. This is to designate that the anchor bolt can be welded.  Since F1554 Grade 55 anchor bolts need to be specified as being weldable, it is important to confirm that they do in fact meet the “S1” supplemental requirement prior to any type of welding. Because of this, Portland bolt has all of our raw material used to manufacture F1554 Grade 55 anchor bolts melted and rolled to meet this requirement whether the “S1” supplemental requirement is needed or not. As a result, you will never need to question the safety of performing a weld on any of our F1554 Grade 55 anchor bolts.