Prediction of Welding Residual Stress by Using Thermo-Metallurgical-Mechanical Constitute Model

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of solid-state phase transformation on welding residual stress in high stress low alloy steel. In this study, based on commercial finite element software, a sequentially coupled thermal, metallurgical, mechanical plane strain finite element model is developed. The main effort is to develop a series of subroutines which consider the heat transfer from welding arc and numerical implementation of a thermo-metallurgical-mechanical constitute equation. The effectiveness of developed computational method is confirmed by a butt welding simulation. Simulation of butt welding demonstrates that the distribution pattern of longitudinal residual stresses perpendicular to weld centerline at the upper surface of weldment has two peak and transformation plasticity has significant effect on the evolution of residual stress.