IPVP 1874

International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 75 (1998) 857864

Effect of welding conditions on residual stresses due to butt welds

Tso-Liang Teng a,*, Chih-Cheng Lin b
a

Institute of System Engineering, Chung Cheng Institute of Technology, Ta-Shi, Tao-Yuan, Taiwan, ROC b Technical Section, Orderance Readiness and Development Center, Chi-Chi, Nan-Tou, Taiwan, ROC Received 20 July 1998; accepted 15 August 1998

Abstract Fusion welding is a joining process in which the coalescence of metals is accomplished by fusion. Owing to localized heating by the welding process and subsequent rapid cooling, residual stresses can arise in the weld itself and in the base metal. Residual stresses attributed to welding pose signicant problems in the accurate fabrication of structures because those stresses heavily induce brittle fracturing and degrade the buckling strength of welded structures. Therefore, estimating the magnitude and distribution of welding residual stresses and characterizing the effects of certain welding conditions on the residual stresses are deemed necessary. In this work, we predict the residual stresses during one-pass arc welding in a steel plate using ansys nite element techniques. The effects of travel speed, specimen size, external mechanical constraints and preheating on residual stresses are also discussed. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Fusion welding is a joining process in which the coalescence of metals is achieved by fusion. This form of welding has been widely employed in fabricating structures such as ships, offshore structures, steel bridges, and pressure vessels. Owing to localized heating by the welding process and subsequent rapid cooling, residual stresses can arise in the weld itself and in the base metal. Such stresses are usually of yield point magnitude. Residual stresses attributed to welding pose signicant problems in the accurate fabrication of structures because those stresses heavily induce brittle fracturing and degrade the buckling strength of welded structures. Therefore, estimating the magnitude and distribution of welding residual stresses and characterizing the effects of certain welding conditions on the residual stresses are relevant tasks. Many investigators have developed analytical and experimental methods to predict welding residual stresses. However, with advances in computer technology and such techniques as the nite element method, the means of analyzing residual stresses in welded structures enhanced even further. For instance, Norton and Rosenthal [1, 2] measured residual stresses by the X-ray diffraction technique. Cheng et al. [3] investigated the residual stresses due to surface treatment using the compliance method. That method can measure a rapidly varying compressive stress
* Corresponding author. 0308-0161/98/$ - see front matter PII: S0308-016 1(98)00084-2

under the interface which the X-ray technique would fail to detect. Pange and Pukas [4] presented hole-drilling and strain gauges to assess residual stresses. Also, Muraki et al. [5] developed elasto-plastic nite-element computer programs on thermal stresses and metal movement during welding. Kuang and Atluri [6] utilized a moving-mesh nite element procedure to examine a temperature eld due to a moving heat source. Moreover, Shim et al. [7] derived an analytical method for predicting through-thickness distribution of residual stresses in a thick plate with a multipass welding process. Chidiac et al. [8] discussed the iterative procedure employed for non-linear heat transfer analysis to determine the thermal cycle for different welding types. Josefson [9] estimated residual stresses in a multi-pass weld and in a spot-welded box beam with solvia and abaqus commercially available FE-codes for non-linear analyses. Yang and Xiao [10] proposed an analytical model to examine the residual stress distribution across the weld of panels welded with mechanical constraints. Furthermore, Ueda and coworkers [1113] presented a novel measuring method of three-dimensional residual stresses based on the principle which is simplied by utilizing the characteristics of the distribution of inherent strains induced in a long welded joint. Residual stresses during welding are unavoidable and their effects on welded structures cannot be disregarded. Design and fabrication conditions, such as the structure thickness, joint design, welding conditions and welding sequence, must be altered so that the adverse effects of

1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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residual stresses can be reduced to acceptable levels. In this work, we predict the residual stresses during one-pass arc welding in a steel plate using ansys nite element techniques. The effects of travel speed, specimen size, external mechanical constraints and preheat on residual stresses are also discussed.

boundary condition  2T 2T kx N N ky 2x x 2y y hc T T hr T

2T N kz 2z z
Tr 0

 qs 5

2. Theoretical considerations Welding residual stress distribution is calculated by ansys nite element techniques. Theoretical considerations can be assessed either by a thermal or a mechanical model. 2.1. Thermal model analysis 2.1.1. Governing equations When a volume is bounded by an arbitrary surface S, the balance relation of the heat ow is expressed by   2R y 2R x 2R z Qx; y; z; t 2x 2y 2z rC

where Nx, Ny, Nz are the direction cosines of the outward drawn normal to the boundary, hc is the convection heat transfer coefcient, hr is the radiation heat transfer coefcient, qs is the boundary heat ux, T is the surrounding temperature and Tr is the temperature of the radiation heat source. The radiation heat transfer coefcient is expressed as hr s1FT 2 Tr2 T Tr 6

in which s is the StefanBoltzmann constant, 1 is the effective emissivity and F is a conguration factor. 2.1.2. Material properties Since welding processes undergo a high temperature cycle and exhibit material properties that are temperature dependent, the transient temperature can be calculated by an extrapolation method with a two-time interval as t Tt Dt Tt 2Dt 7 Tt Tt Dt Dt Let g denote the temperature-dependent material coefcient, i.e. the function of T(t ). The material coefcient at time t can be expressed as 1 t gTt dt 8 g Dt t Dt 2.2. Mechanical model analysis 2.2.1. Mechanical equations Two basic sets of equations relating to the mechanical model, the equilibrium equations and the constitutive equations, are considered as follows. (a) Equations of equilibrium

2Tx; y; z; t 2t

where Rx, Ry, Rz are the rates of heat ow per unit area, Tx; y; z; t is the current temperature, Qx; y; z; t is the rate of internal heat generation, r is the density, C is the specic heat and t is the time. The model can then be completed by introducing the Fourier heat ow as Rx kx

2T 2x

2a

Ry

2T ky 2y
kz

2b

Rz

2T 2z

2c

sij;j
and

rbi 0

9a 9b

where kx, ky, kz are the thermal conductivities in the x, y and z directions respectively. By considering that the process in the material non-linear, the parameters kx, ky, kz, r , C are a function of temperature. Inserting eqns (2a), (2b), (2c) into eqn (1) yields       2 2T 2 2T 2 2T 2T kx ky kz Q rC 2x 2y 2z 2x 2y 2z 2t 3 eqn (3) is the differential equation governing heat conduction in a solid body. The general solution is obtained by accepting the initial and boundary conditions: initial condition Tx; y; z; 0 T0 x; y; z 4

sij sji

where s ij is the stress tensor and bi is the body force. (b) Constitutive equations for a thermal elasto-plastic material The thermal elasto-plastic material model, based on the von Mises yield criterion and the isotropic strain hardening rule, is considered. Stressstrain relations can be written as ds Dep d1 and Dep De
e

C th dT

10 11
p

Dp

where [D ] is the elastic stiffness matrix, [D ] is the plastic

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In this study, incremental stress is obtained by the full NewtonRaphson method.

3. Estimation of welding residual stresses 3.1. Analyzed model Fig. 1 depicts the specimen in this study. Analysis is performed on two long plates of 300 mm length and 100 mm width by butt welding. The magnitude of heat input is characterized by a welding current I 110 A, voltage V 20 V, welding speed v 5 mm s 1 and the efciency of heat-input Eff 0.7. Fig. 2 displays the materials thermal and mechanical properties. Evaluating the three-dimensional residual stresses may require a considerable amount of computational time and cost. Herein, a two-dimensional axisymmetric model was designed to calculate the residual stress of the plate by the ansys nite element code. Four-node thermalstructure couple elements were also used. 3.2. Results and discussion A stress acting parallel to the direction of the weld bead is known as a longitudinal stress, denoted by the term s y. Fig. 3 depicts the distributions of longitudinal residual stress along the x direction. High tensile stresses occur in regions

Fig. 1. Geometry of butt-welded plates.

stiffness matrix, [C th] is the thermal stiffness matrix, ds is the stress increment, d1 is the strain increment and dT is the temperature increment.

2.2.2. Iteration Since thermal elasto-plastic analysis is a non-linear problem, the incremental calculation is employed herein.

Fig. 2. Mechanical properties of welded plates.

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Fig. 3. The longitudinal stress along the x direction.

Fig. 4. The transverse stress along the y direction.

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Fig. 5. The effect of specimen length on transverse residual stresses.

Fig. 6. The effect of specimen thickness on longitudinal residual stresses.

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Fig. 7. The effect of travel speed on transverse residual stresses.

near the weld due to a resistance contraction of the material as cooling commences. Also, for self-equilibrating purposes, compressive stresses occur in regions removed from the weld. The maximum stress value is as high as the materials yield stress. A stress acting normal to the direction of the weld bead, is known as a transverse stress, denoted by the term s x. Fig. 4 illustrates the distributions of transverse residual stress s x along the y direction. As this gure reveals, the stress distributions are symmetrical at the middle of the plate. The tensile stresses occur at the middle of the plate, and the compressive stresses occur at the ends of the weld. Furthermore, the magnitude of compressive stresses exceeds the tensile stresses.

4.1. Effects of specimen length A butt-welded plate joint of thin plate is considered as a model for analysis under the welding conditions mentioned earlier. The specimens width is assumed to be 200 mm, and the length of specimen varies as 50 mm, 100 mm, 200 mm and 400 mm. Fig. 5 summarizes the effect of specimen length on transverse residual stresses. This gure indicates that the transverse residual stresses are tensile in the central areas and compressive in the areas near the plate ends. Notably, the high tensile stresses in the central region decrease with increasing length of the specimen. 4.2. Effects of specimen thickness Welds were made with some heat input. Fig. 6 presents the distributions of longitudinal residual stresses at the top surface with various specimen thicknesses, i.e. 5 mm, 8 mm, 12 mm, in the weld metal of a butt joint. The tensile stress always appears only in the areas near the fusion zone. The fact that the absorption energy per unit volume in a thin weldment exceeds that in thick ones accounts for why the residual stresses increased with decreasing specimen thickness.

4. The effects of welding conditions on residual stresses In welded structures, reducing the residual stresses during an early stage of design and fabrication is of priority concern. For this reason, the effects of certain welding conditions on the residual stresses are characterized in the following.

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Fig. 8. The effect of mechanical constraint on transverse residual stresses.

4.3. Effects of travel speed Approximately the same weld size was produced with various travel speeds of 3.33 mm s 1, 7 mm s 1 and 10 mm s 1. A higher welding speed not only reduces the amount of adjacent material affected by the heat of the arc, but also progressively decreases the residual stresses, as shown in Fig. 7. The important difference lies in the fact that the higher speed welding technique produced a slightly narrower isotherm. This isotherms width inuences the transverse shrinkage of butt welds, accounting for why faster welding speeds generally result in less residual stresses. 4.4. Effects of external mechanical constraints The thermal and mechanical behavior of weldments could be readily manipulated through external constraints. For a circumstance in which the lateral contraction of the joint is restrained by an external constraint, Fig. 8 depicts the distribution of transverse residual stresses. Moreover, the fact that the degree of the transverse shrinkage of a restrained joint is reduced accounts for why the magnitude of the residual stresses with a restrained joint is larger than that estimated with an unrestrained joint.

4.5. Effects of preheating The residual stresses depend on the nal equilibrium temperature of the temperaturestress cycle. Preheating treatments are used primarily to inuence the time at temperature and cooling rates within the weldment, thereby reducing the residual stresses. Herein, the specimen was preheated homogeneously up to 200 C, 300 C and 400 C. Fig. 9 summarizes those results and shows that transverse residual stresses signicantly reduce after applying the preheating treatment.

5. Conclusions Based on the above discussion, we can conclude the following. (1) For the residual stresses distribution in a butt weld, the middle weld bead is in tension and the magnitude of this stress equals the yield stress. The ends of the weld are in compression. (2) The peak transverse residual stresses in the central region decrease with an increasing specimen length. (3) The tensile residual stresses in the region near the fusion zone increase with a decreasing specimen thickness. (4) A higher welding speed reduces the amount of

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Fig. 9. The effect of preheating treatment on transverse residual stresses.

adjacent material affected by the heat of the arc and progressively decreases the residual stresses. (5) The magnitude of the residual stresses with a restrained joint is larger than that estimated with an unrestrained joint. (6) Owing to the preheating treatment, the weldment signicantly reduces the residual stresses.

[6]

[7]

[8]

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