Engineering components operating at high temperature often fail due to the initiation and growth of cracks in the heataffected zone adjacent to a weld. Understanding the effects of microstructural evolution in the heat-affected zone is important in order to predict and control the final properties of welded joints. This study presents a combined finite element method and phase field method for simulation of austenite grain growth in the heat-affected zone of a tempered martensite (P91) steel weld. The finite element method is used to determine the thermal history of the heat-affected zone during gas tungsten arc welding of a P91 steel plate. Then, the calculated thermal history is included in a phase field model to simulate grain growth at various positions in the heat-affected zone. The predicted mean grain size and grain distribution match well with experimental data for simulated welds from the literature. The work lays the foundation for optimising the process parameters in welding of P91 and other ferritic/martensitic steels in order to control the final heat-affected zone microstructure.
During the welding process, a material is subjected to thermal cycles with rapid heating and cooling rates resulting in residual stress in the weld and the base metal. These residual stress may affect the mechanical performance leading to premature failure of components. Therefore, it is critical to have a detailed knowledge of the residual stress distribution in the weld region as well as in the vicinity in order to predict the service life of components. Due to the high neutron penetration power, neutron diffraction is one of the most useful techniques for nondestructive evaluation of residual stress in welded regions within the bulk. In this paper, neutron diffraction was used to investigate the residual stress distribution within three single bead-on-plate welds of P91 martensitic steel. Residual stress measurements were performed at different neutron diffraction instruments and different methodology of stress determination was applied. Measurements were carried out at the diffractometers Engin-X (ISIS Neutron Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), E3 (BER-II, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin) and SALSA (Institut Laue-Langevin). The results of the measurements presented here, were used to determine the variability of the three instruments and compare the effect of different welding parameters on residual stress. The residual stress measurements were also compared with the respective results of the Task Group 1 (TG1) of the European Network on Neutron Techniques standardization for structural integrity (NET).
Failures in engineering components operating at high temperature often initiate in welded joints, particularly in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) adjacent to a weld. This is due to the inhomogenous microstructure of the weld and adjacent material due to the different thermal histories experienced during the weld cycle. It is therefore important to accurately predict the temperature distributions arising during welding and the subsequent effect on material microstructure. The NET TG1 bead-on-plate weld geometry is examined in this work. This geometry is a single weld bead laid on the surface of an AISI 316L austenite steel plate. Experimental data from the TG1 study are available to validate different weld simulation techniques. Here, a sensitivity study to the thermal properties is carried out and the influence on the HAZ temperatures and grain size is examined. The study shows that the conductivity and the specific heat capacity significantly affect the temperature prediction in the HAZ with a similar influence on predicted grain size following welding. Results are presented for a stainless steel (316L) and a martensitic steel (P91) plate.
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