Brimstoner :
I’ll bet this is a pretty gray area as relates to lamination size, location, rejection criteria, etc. Most people probably don’t even know it exists, because to some extent the mills take care of it on their end. You would have to describe your exact problem, the lamination size and location, the intended use of and the WF size a little further. Larger WF shapes can tend to have some piping in the regions of the flg./web juncture, and some laminations in thick flgs. This is a function of the large blooms that they roll from and the rolling process. And, I thought they were solving this problem with continuous casting. Both tend to be parallel with the length of the beam, and thus the argument goes, that these are generally parallel with the primary lines of stress in these members so it is usually not a significant problem. This argument doesn’t wash when the laminations get very large (whatever that means?), or are in a region where you are loading or stressing the member across the grain or perpendicular to the piping or lamination.
If the lamination shows up at the tip/edge of the flg., I would think the mill would reject the member or cut that section out, if they found it. I don’t think they normally do continuous, in process, testing for this, but they can and you can call for this (spec. this at purchase), at some extra cost. I am aware of some areas and instances where this might be a problem on WF shapes, but most of my experience with laminations has been on heavy plates. And, the mills gave us a song and a dance when we confronted them on the matter. I don’t remember any ASTM or AISC criteria that we could exactly point to, but this was some years ago, and I’m not even real sure how our purchasing people and the mills worked this out. But, they did quit sending us crap when they knew what we were going to be using the plates for. And, we usually did some in house testing in critical areas of the plate. I’d be interested in knowing more about your exact problem, the end usage, and the loadings and stresses involved, etc.
