Butt joints are those welds where the weld metal is contained within the planes of the surfaces

of the

items being joined. The weld throat may be the full section thickness, a full penetration joint, or a

proportion only - a partial penetration joint. Welds may be 'single sided joints', welded all from one
side, or 'double sided', welded from both sides, ( Fig.3).

Fig.3. Full and partial penetration welds

Except for very thin plate, arc welded butt joints require a weld preparation to be flame cut or

machined along the joint line. The conventional arc welding processes can penetrate into the base

metal by only a limited amount. The maximum penetration in conventional TIG or manual metal arc

(SMAW) welds is in the region of 3mm, MAG (GMAW) welds around 6mm and submerged arc some
15mm.

In order to weld the full thickness of a plate and achieve the weld throat thickness required by design
it is therefore necessary to cut away sufficient metal along the joint line so that the welding electrode

has access to the root of the joint, enabling the root pass to be deposited and then the remainder

filled to complete the joint. A weld preparation, the 'weld prep', is therefore formed along the joint line

using flame cutting, plasma cutting or machining. Figure 4identifies the key features of a 'single bevel'
weld preparation and those of a 'single-V' joint.

The smaller the included angle, the less access this will give to the root and the greater is the risk of

defects such as lack of side wall fusion. This reduced access may, however, be compensated for by an
increase in the root gap.
The bevel angles and the root gap will depend upon the process(es) used to make the joint and the

material thickness. A narrow included angle requires less weld metal and therefore is more economical

as the thickness increases. A downside to this is that the narrower the angle the more difficult access
becomes and the risk of welding defects as mentioned above.

Too wide a root gap will result in a loss of control of the weld pool and melt through giving an irregular

and excessive penetration bead. This may be overcome by using a backing strip if this is permitted by
the service conditions.

Fig.4. Single bevel weld preparation

The choice of the weld preparation is therefore a compromise between maintaining adequate access
and minimising the weld volume.

If a high quality root bead is required and access is not available to the root side of the weld e.g. in a

pipe carrying fluids or in high pressure service, then an acceptable condition can be achieved using the

TIG process to make the root bead. A typical pipe butt weld set-up would be 60° included angle, 1mm
to 2mm root gap and a zero to 1.5mm thick root face.

Where access to the reverse side of the joint is available, the condition of the penetration bead is less
important as the root bead can be ground to sound metal and a sealing pass deposited.

A reduction in weld volume can be achieved by the use of a 'J' preparation as shown in Fig.5. This

preparation, unlike the straight chamfer of the 'V' preparation which can be flame cut, must be
machined.
Fig.5. Key features of single sided 'J' preparation

This can be an expensive operation, which is why this type of weld is used only on thick joints, where

the saving in deposited weld metal outweighs the cost of machining, or where very high quality root
beads are required.

Machining of the weld preparation dictates that the dimensions, particularly that of the root face

thickness, can be controlled far more closely than is possible with flame cutting and therefore a more
accurate fit-up can be achieved.

It is often used on orbitally TIG welded pipe butt joints where a machined joint enables the tolerances
required by a fully automatic process to be achieved.