International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14

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International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpvp

Analysis of residual stress relief mechanisms in post-weld heat

treatment
Pingsha Dong*, Shaopin Song, Jinmiao Zhang
Welded Structures Laboratory, Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a recent study on weld residual stress relief mechanisms associated with furnace-
Received 26 December 2013 based uniform post-weld heat treatment (PWHT). Both finite element and analytical methods are
Received in revised form used to quantitatively examine how plastic deformation and creep relaxation contribute to residual
26 June 2014
stress relief process at different stages of PWHT process. The key contribution of this work to an
Accepted 29 June 2014
improved understanding of furnace based uniform PWHT can be summarized as follows:
Available online 15 July 2014

Keywords: (1) Plastic deformation induced stress relief during PWHT can be analytically expressed by
Weld residual stress the change in material elastic deformation capacity (or elastic deformation limit)
Post-weld heat treatment (PWHT) measured in terms of material yield strength to Young's modulus ratio, which has a rather
Residual stress relief
limited role in overall residual stress relief during furnace based uniform PWHT.
Stress relaxation
Seam weld
(2) The most dominant stress relief mechanism is creep strain induced stress relaxation, as
Residual stress modeling expected. However, a rapid creep strain development accompanied by a rapid residual
stress reduction during heating stage before reaching PWHT temperature is shown to
contribute to most of the stress relief seen in overall PWHT process, suggesting PWHT
hold time can be significantly reduced as far as residual stress relief is concerned.
(3) A simple engineering scheme for estimating residual stress reduction is proposed based
on this study by relating material type, PWHT temperature, and component wall
thickness.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Garwood [7]. Experimental investigations like these on selected

Post-weld heat treatment (PWHT) is often required for pressure
vessel and piping components for relieving residual stresses and/or
improving weldment properties, as summarized in a comprehen-
sive review by McEnerney and Dong [1]. Stipulations for perform-
ing PWHT are given in various design codes and standards such as
ASME Division 2 [2], API 579 RP [3], EN 13445 [4], among others as
discussed in Ref. [1]. All these codes share a set of rather similar
PWHT requirements in terms of PWHT ramp-up heating rate, hold
temperature, and hold time, depending upon the type of steel and
wall thickness involved. However, there is little information avail-
able in the literature on how these stipulated PWHT conditions
were determined, as illustrated by Fidler [5,6] and Smith and
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dongp@umich.edu (P. Dong).
weldment geometries seem to support an estimate of residual
stress reduction at about 30% of material yield strength, as adopted
by various defect assessment procedures such as API 579 RP [3] and
BS 7910 [8].
As far as residual stress relief is concerned, some recent in-
vestigations have shown that code-specified PWHT procedures
could be excessively conservative, particularly in terms of hold time
for thick vessels. For instance, MeEnerney and Dong [1] reviewed
various national/international codes and standards including in-
dustrial reports such as the report by Sangdahl and Rebenack [9] on
thick section vessel PWHT experiences. Dong and Hong [10] and
Zhang et al. [11] reported a series of finite element residual stress
and PWHT study using Omega creep model by Prager [12] on
different PWHT hold temperature and hold time for vessel wall
thickness up to 100 mm. They [1,10,11] found that for furnace based
PWHT, the code required hold time can be significantly reduced for
achieving an expected residual stress reduction as long as a

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpvp.2014.06.002
0308-0161/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14
reasonable PWHT temperature is achieved, which can result in
significant economic benefits. A very recent study by Takazawa and
Yanagida [13] on a laboratory weld mockup specimen using both
Norton and NortoneBailey creep models confirmed a rather similar
trend as discussed above, particularly when PWHT temperature is
close to or at coded-specified temperature level. It is worth noting
that the aforementioned investigations involve three different
types of creep models. Takazawa and Yanagida [13] considered both
primary and steady-state creep behavior in the form of Norton
Bailey model and pure steady-state creep behavior based on clas-
sical Norton model, while Dong and Hong [10] and Zhang et al. [11]
used a tertiary creep model widely used by petroleum industry [3].
These previous investigations seem to suggest that as far as general
residual stress relief behavior in PWHT of weldments is concerned,
computational results are not that sensitive to which type of creep
models used, as long as sufficient material properties for a given
application are available.
Although the aforementioned investigations provided an
improved understanding on the mechanics of residual stress relief
during PWHT, there exist a number of questions that are of both
practical importance and fundamental in nature. For example, can
PWHT hold time be prolonged to compensate the use of a lower
PWHT temperature to achieve the same stress relief effects? A
limited experimental study on a low carbon steel weldment by
Olabi and Hashimi [14] seem to support this proposition, while the
investigations both by Dong and Hong [10] and by Takazawa and
Yanagida [13] seem to point out that hold time has no significant
effect on residual stress relief. Therefore, a lower PWHT tempera-
ture may not be substituted with a longer hold time to achieve a
similar residual stress relief effect. This finding seems to be sup-
ported by another recent study by Yaghi et al. [15] in which the
authors reported that more than half of the residual stress reduc-
tion already occurred during the first 30 min after reaching PWHT
temperature by considering a 100 hour of PWHT hold time. It
should be noted that in the latter study [15] creep relaxation was
assumed negligible during the temperature ramp up stage during
which studies by Dong and Hong [10], Zhang et al. [11], and Taka-
zawa and Yanagida [13] all showed that most of residual stresses
are already relieved when PWHT temperature is reached.
Another question is if residual stress relief occurs in any sig-
nificant manner without even triggering creep relaxation mecha-
nism when a component is heated up to a PWHT temperature?
Stout [23] postulated that a residual stress reduction without creep
relaxation can be measured by the ratio of material yield strength at
PWHT temperature to its room temperature value, which could be
significant, depending upon material yield strength dependency on
temperature. Such a postulation has served as a basis for justifying
some of codified PWHT procedures even to this day, e.g., in ASME
Div 2 [2]. To the authors' best knowledge, a quantitative assessment
on plastic deformation effects as a result of yield strength and
Young's modulus change during PWHT is still not available in the
literature except some preliminary results reported by the authors
[10,11]. For instance, Yaghi et al. [15,17] stated that stress relaxation
occur when yield stress and elastic modulus reduce to their values
at PWHT temperature, but without qualifying how and to what an
extent such a phenomena would contribute to plastic strain
development in relieving residual stresses. The study by Takazawa
and Yanagida [13] did not separate such effects from creep relax-
ation effects on residual stress relief in their computational
analyses.
With the above discussions, this paper is structured to address
the following specific questions, after presenting a validation study
on a girth welded component on which the computational
modeling results using the procedures adopted in this work are
compared with measurement results:
7
(a) What is the dominant stress relief mechanism during
furnace based PWHT
(b) How does plasticity deformation caused by the change in
yield strength and Young's modulus during heating play a
role in stress relief, if any?
(c) How to quantitatively inter-relate PWHT temperature, hold
time, component wall thickness, and material type so that a
more consistent “TimeeTemperature-Thickness” relation-
ship can be develped for residaul stress relief purpose?
It should be emphasized that this paper is focused upon residual
stress relief. In addition to residual stress relief, material property
improvement is another main objective for using PWHT in practice,
which is currently being investigated in an on-going study, to be
published separately in due time.
2. Analysis procedure
Analysis of weld residual stress relief during PWHT involves
modeling of both weld residual stress development process as a
result of welding and residual stress relaxation process during
PWHT when an as-welded component is subjected to a controlled
heating, holding, and cooling cycle.
2.1. Weld residual stress modeling procedure
A comprehensive discussion on requirements and effective
methodologies for computational modeling of weld residual
stresses for structural integrity assessment purposes are given in
Dong and Hong [14], Dong [15], and most recently by Song et al.
[16] to which the present study is a continuation of the same
research program that is on-going at University of Michigan. As a
result, detailed residual stress modeling procedures used in this
study (see Ref. [16]) will not be repeated here due to space
limitation. Instead, a validation example for demonstrating the
validity of both residual stress modeling and creep relaxation
modeling procedure will be presented here to provide a basis for
supporting the discussions and observations to be presented in
this paper.
A P91 pipe girth weld mockup (see Fig. 1a) was taken from Yaghi
et al. [17], on which both experimental residual stress measure-
ments both under as-welded and after PWHT are also available. By
using the welding conditions and materials properties given in
Ref. [17], the same residual stress modeling procedure documented
by the same authors in Ref. [16] is used to estimate the resulting
residual stress state after welding. The finite element model
(axisymmetric) details showing individual pass profiles are shown
in Fig. 1b. The final through thickness residual stress distributions
along weld centerline are shown in Fig. 1c and compared with Deep
Hole Drilling (DHD) measurements given in Ref. [17]. It is evident
that the agreement between the modeling results and measure-
ment results is rather reasonable (see further discussions on such a
comparison in Ref. [16]).
The same modeling procedure is used throughout this paper for
generating weld residual stress information for seam-welded pipes
to be used for PWHT stress relief analyses. Note that analysis of
PWHT stress relief with a focus on pipe girth welds as a part of this
same study has already been reported by Zhang et al. [11].
2.2. Creep relaxation modeling procedure
With the weld residual stress state generated in the previous
section (e.g., see Fig. 1c), PWHT procedure follows the following
steps:
8 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14

180mm 290mm

(a) (b)

600 Weld Centerline – Axial Stresses 600 Weld Centerline – Hoop Stresses
Residual Stress [MPa]

Residual Stress [MPa]

400 400 DHD
DHD
FEA FEA
200 200

0 0

-200 -200

-400 -400
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Distance from OD [mm] Distance from OD [mm]

(c)
Fig. 1. P91 pipe girth weld geometry and finite element model details.

(1) The as-welded residual stress distribution is treated as an significant temperature gradients that may develop within
initial stress state for subsequent PWHT stress relaxation weldment.
analysis, which is done by mapping the full-field residual (3) Elasto-viscoplastic analysis incorporating MPC Omega creep
stresses and corresponding effective plastic strain informa- model [12] to be discussed in the section is then performed
tion onto the same model over the temperature cycled.
(2) A uniform temperature within the weldment is assumed to
follow a specified PWHT heating and cooling cycle (see the The results after PWHT for the P91 pipe girth weld shown in
one given in Fig. 2a for P91 pipe girth weld PWHT as given in Fig. 1 are plotted in Fig. 2b along with DHD residual stress mea-
Refs. [16,17]) in a quasi-static manner. This assumption can surement results after PWHT. The agreement between the
be justified for furnace-based PWHT stress relief treatment modeling and measurement results seems very reasonable. Note
since a slow enough heating and cooling is stipulated in that the magnitudes of both residual stress components after
relevant Codes and Standards [e.g., 2-3] to avoid any PWHT are very low, in the order of 20e30 MPa in peak values.

Fig. 2. Comparison of through-thickness residual stress distributions between modeling using Omega creep model and Deep Hole Drilling (DHD) measurement results: (a) PWHT
thermal cycle; (b) Residual stress distributions along weld centerline after PWHT.
 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14 9

The incorporation of Materials Properties Council (MPC) Omega

creep model in this study (see Ref. [12]) is based on the following
considerations: 50.8

(a) It has been adopted by ASME Div 2 [2] since 2007 and API
579 RP [3] over a decade ago and become widely accepted by
US petroleum industry for performing creep related design Narrow Groove Weld:
and life assessments [19e21] Groove Width = 9.5
(b) Its material constants for a large number of materials for I= 260 amp. , V=25 volts
Speed =1000/min.
pressure vessel and piping applications are available in the
2007 API 579 RP [3]. This is particularly important for this
study in that both weld residual stress states and stress relief
behaviors can be cross-compared over different classes of
materials in order to establish a general relationship be- y
tween PWHT parameters and material type
(c) As discussed in the previous section, previous numerical and
202
experimental studies [11e13,18,22] have showed that weld
residual stress relief behaviors seem not sensitive to the use x
of any particular creep model among Norton [11,13,17],
Norton Bailey [13], and Omega [10,11], in addition to the Fig. 3. 2D cross-section model (generalized plane-strain) for a thick cylinder with a
validation study shown in Fig. 2b. narrow gap seam weld (all length units in mm).

The Omega creep model is an engineering approach to account

for steady state creep and strain-induced softening tertiary creep
with a uniaxial form [12]:

ε_ c ¼ ε_ c0 exp½Um εc  (1)

where

ε_ c : current creep strain rate with an integrated form at time t as:

εc ¼ 1=Um lnð1  Um εc0 tÞ
ε_ c0 : reference or initial creep strain rate;
Um: creep damage coefficient measuring a material's ability to
tolerate creep strain as function of temperature and stress state,
determined by the slope of the best fit line of natural logarithm
of true strain rate versus creep strain test data.

Eq. (1) can be written in its multi-axial stress/strain form sij as:
Fig. 4. Yield strength and Young's moduli as a function temperature for 2-1/4CrMo and
3 sij c carbon steel [2,3].
ε_ cij ¼ $ ε_ c0 eUm ε (2)
2 s

where sij,s, and εc are deviatoric stress tensor, von Mises effective 3. Analysis results
stress and effective creep strain, respectively. Eq. (2) was coded as
an ABAQUS creep user-subroutine for performing all PWHT ana- 3.1. Stress relaxation mechanisms
lyses reported in this paper.
A series of seam-welded thick-wall cylinders with different wall 3.1.1. Heating effects without creep
thicknesses are considered here. It should be noted that the find- To separate the contribution of plastic deformation to residual
ings to be discussed here are equally applicable to other weld stress relief from that due to creep during PWHT, a seam welded
configurations such as pipe girth welds as recently demonstrated in component shown in Fig. 3 subjected to quasi-steady state heating
Ref. [11] by the same authors. A representative seam welded pipe and cooling PWHT cycle (see Fig. 5 with t1 ¼ 3 h, t2 ¼ 7 h, and
and finite element model are illustrated in Fig. 3 with a wall
thickness of 200 (50.8 mm). All relevant temperature-dependent
material properties for residual stress modeling purposes were
taken from Ref. [2]. As an example, Fig. 4 shows material yield stress
and Young's modulus as a function of temperature for both 2-1/
4CrMo and carbon steels [2] to be considered in this study. Note
that Young's moduli for both materials are essentially same as
shown in Fig. 4 according ASME Div 2 [3]. As demonstrated through
parametric residual stress analyses given in Ref. [14], that beyond
700  C, material properties tend to have negligible effects on final
residual stresses and that a linear extrapolation scheme to nil
strength at melting temperature can be used without causing any
significant differences in predicted residual stresses. Fig. 5. PWHT cycle and parameters for uniform furnace-based stress relief PWHT.
10 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14

TPWHT ¼ 7000C) is evaluated first without activating creep response

described by Eq. (2). The final residual stress state at the end of the
heating and cooling cycle (solid lines without symbols) is compared
with the as-welded residual stresses along weld centerline in Fig. 6.
The resulting reduction in residual stresses after going through the
given heating and cooling cycle is insignificant (only noticeable a
localized area near OD surface) in both axial and hoop residual
stress components. This seems to contradict an earlier hypothesis
(e.g., [23]) that if a welded component is heated up to a sufficiently
high temperature at which the material yield strength reduces to a
fraction of that at room temperature (see Fig. 4), plastic strain
development would result in a reduction of residual stresses by a
similar fraction, even without considering material creep behavior.
A detailed examination of the analysis results indicates that there
are no noticeable plastic strains developed throughout the heating
and cooling cycle, except at a few localized areas near OD, see Ref.
[10] for detailed discussions. Fig. 4 indicates that 2-1/4CrMo has a
yield strength of about 400 MPa at room temperature and about
100 MPa at 700  C. A heating up to 700  C would have resulted in a
reduction of residual stress by 75%, according to [23]. A more
rigorous treatment on this subject will be given in a later section.

3.1.2. Creep relaxation

If creep behavior is activated through Omega creep model given
in Eq. (2) for the same case discussed in the previous section (see
Fig. 6), the resulting stress and creep strain history results at two
highly stressed positions are plotted in Fig. 7 for the entire PWHT
cycle. As the weldment temperature is being ramping up, residual
stress values at both positions reduce initially in an approximately
linear manner which can be attributed to the approximately linear
500
Hoop Residual Stress, MPa
Fig. 7. Effective stress and creep strain histories at Positions A and B during PWHT and
associated effective stress and strain relationship (2-1/4CrMo): (a) von Mises effective
stress; (b) effective creep strain.
reduction in yield strength shown in Fig. 4. At about two hours into
heating (at a temperature range between 400  C and 500  C), a
rapid reduction in residual stress can be seen in Fig. 7a, as a result of
a rapid development of creep strain around the same time frame
shown in Fig. 7b. During the holding part of the PWHT at 700Co, the

As Welded reduction in residual stresses becomes insignificant, as a result of

400 After Heating&Cooling w/o Creep insignificant creep strain change during holding. Upon cooling
300 down to room temperature, the final residual stresses are at about
100 MPa. Since there are no noticeable plastic strains developed
200
during the PWHT cycle as discussed earlier and demonstrated in
100 Ref. [10], the reduction of the residual stresses shown in Fig. 7a can
0 be solely attributed to the development of creep strain or creep-
induced stress relaxation shown in Fig. 7b. It is worth noting that
-100 creep strain becomes fully developed even before hold time starts.
-200 The creep relaxation behaviors during PWHT shown in Fig. 7 are
(a)
not unique to the given residual stress distribution, material, and
-300 weld type. This can be illustrated by a further examination of the
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 validation case on P91 girth weld PWHT analysis results presented
earlier (see Figs. 1e2). Both hoop residual stress and creep strain
700 histories at a point about 5 mm below OD surface is plotted in Fig. 8
Axial Residual Stress, MPa

As Welded
600 over the entire PWHT cycle (see Fig. 2a). A similar behavior to that
After Heating&Cooling w/o Creep
shown in Fig. 7 can be seen for the P91 pipe girth weld. Hoop creep
500 strain becomes noticeable after just about one and half hours of
heating and become stabilized when PWHT temperature (760  C) is
400
reached. There is no noticeable change in either stress or creep
300 strain during the entire hold time of 3 h shown in Fig. 2a.

200 3.2. Effects of PWHT parameters

100 (b) 3.2.1. PWHT temperature
0 By considering the same weldment shown in Fig. 3, effects of
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 different PWHT temperatures on residual stress relief are examined
as shown in Fig. 9 at a position in HAZ (5 mm below OD). Although
Distace from Inner Surface, mm the general trends in Fig. 9 are rather similar to those observed in
Fig. 6. Comparison of residual stress distributions along weld centerline of 2-1/4CrMo
Figs. 7 and 8, the differences in final residual stress values resulted
seem weld between as-welded and after heating to 700C and cooling to room tem- from different PWHT temperatures are significant, particularly at a
perature without considering creep relaxation. relative low PWHT temperature, e.g., at 4200C and 450  C, as shown
 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14 11

that axial residual stress (parallel to weld in seam welded compo-

nents) is normalized by base material yield strength in Fig. 10). As
PWHT hold time increases from 4 h to 10 h, Fig. 10 shows that the
benefit for using extended hold time is not noticeable as far as the
residual stress reduction is concerned. This is consistent with the
observations discussed in previous sections that most of the
reduction in residual stresses occurs at the earlier stage of the
PWHT, even before the PWHT temperature is reached during the
last stage of temperature ramp up. With seam weld wall thickness
changes from 1” (25.4 mm) to 400 (101.6 mm), the results in Fig. 9
show no noticeable difference in residual stress relaxation behav-
iors. Again, most of the stress relaxation can be seen occurring
before the hold time begins. The 400 (101.6 mm) thick weldment
gives a higher as-welded residual stress than the 100 (25.4 mm)
weldment due to the higher restraint conditions.
Fig. 8. Residual stress evolution at a highly stress position (5 mm below OD at weld
In view of Fig. 10, one might ask what specific thickness effects, if
centerline) during PWHT simulated using Omega creep model e P91 pipe girth weld.
any, should be considered in determining PWHT parameters in
practice. A series of transient finite element analyses were then
performed to simulate the temperature response of the weldments
500
with different thicknesses to the temperature ramp up and hold
Heating Holding Cooling process during PWHT. Fig. 11 summarizes the analysis results. For a
400 420C specified furnace temperature rise (solid line in Fig. 12) from room
temperature to 650Co within a period of 3 h before hold starts, the
Hoop Stress, Mpa

(a) 1” (25.4 mm) thick weldment follows the specified furnace tem-
300 perature more closely than the 4” thick weldment. In addition, both
450C
420C the surface and mid-thickness temperatures are almost identical
200
throughout, indicating transient effects of the heat conduction
650C
process within the weldment are negligible. Both findings suggest
500C 500C that if the convection heat transfer coefficient (h) is further
100 600C increased (e.g., by increasing air circulation in the furnace), the
temperature of the 400 (101.6 mm) weldment should follow more
750C
closely to that of the furnace. Alternatively, a decreased ramp up
0 time can be used to achieve the same purpose.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Time, hrs
3.2.3. Ramp-up rate versus thickness
2.E-03 Both the stress relaxation results in Figs. 9, 10 and the heat
Heating Holding Cooling transfer results shown in Fig. 11 suggest that thickness consider-
ations in determining furnace-based PWHT parameters can be
2.E-03
decoupled from creep relaxation problem and treated as a simple
Hoop Creep Strain

(b) heat transfer problem [24] that can be solved analytically. As such,
1.E-03 heat transfer problem definition given in Fig. 12a is solved analyt-
420C ically for a given ambient temperature (T∞) that is linearly ramping-
650C 500C up with time up to a PWHT temperature, say at 650  C. Fig. 12b
8.E-04
500C summarizes the solutions corresponding different plate thickness
and ramp-up time, where temperature difference (T∞T) is defined
600C
4.E-04 as that between the mid-thickness temperature (T) and the
750C ambient temperature (T∞).
420C
If assuming that a temperature gradient requirement of
0.E+00 DT  25C anywhere within the plate during PWHT, Fig. 12b can then
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
be re-plotted as the maximum ramp-up heating rate allowed as a
Time, hrs function of plate thickness, shown in Fig. 13. Note that the heat
convection coefficient (h) used in generating Figs. 12 and 13 is taken
Fig. 9. Stress relaxation and creep strain development at one location near HAZ (5 mm
below OD) in 2-1/4CrMo seam weld with different PWHT temperatures (thold ¼ 4 h):
from a general reference [24], which can vary significantly
(a) Hoop stress; (b) Hoop creep strain . depending upon actual furnace conditions. In practical applications,
an appropriate h can be obtained from furnace specifications and/or
by performing thermal couple measurements of both furnace and
in Fig. 9a. With a PWHT temperature lower than about 500Co, the plate surface temperatures.
reduction of residual stresses become much less significant
(Fig. 9a), as a result of insufficient creep strain development shown 3.2.4. 2-1/4CrMo versus carbon steels
in Fig. 9b. A set of parametric analyses were also performed for carbon
steel weldments using the same seam weld geometry as shown in
3.2.2. PWHT hold time and component thickness Fig. 3. The corresponding carbon steel properties are taken from
Fig. 10 shows the comparison of the residual stress evolution Ref. [2], some of which are documented in Fig. 4. As shown in
during PWHT with 4 h and 10 h of PWHT hold time for component Fig. 14, the overall trend in stress relaxation behaviors under
thicknesses, 100 (25.4 mm) and 400 (101.6 mm), respectively. Note various PWHT conditions is very similar to what has been discussed
12 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14

2 600
TPWHT= 650Co 1" Thick & 4hr Holding Ramp up from 20 to 650C
h = 3 X10^(-5) W/mm^2*C
Axial Residual Stress/Sy

4" Thick & 4hr Holding

1.5 1" Thick & 10hr Holding

Max Heating Rate (C/hr)

4" Thick & 10hr Holding
400
(Note: 1”=25.4mm)
1
Residual Stress
after PWHT (4 hrs) Residual Stress
after PWHT (10 hrs)
0.5
200

Heating

0
0 4 8 12 16
(Note: 1 inch =25.4mm)
Time, Hrs. 0
0 2 4 6 8
Fig. 10. Normalized axial residual stress development (Point A in Fig. 7) during PWHT:
effects of wall thickness and PWHT holding time. Weldment Thickness (inch)

Fig. 13. Maximum ramp-up heating rate (C /h) as a function of plate thickness in
inches (1 inch ¼ 25.4 mm) to maintain a temperature gradient criterion of DT  25  C

with respect to 2-1/4CrMo steel weldments in previous sections.

Some specific details vary, mainly due to the difference in yield
strengths and resistances to creep between the two classes of
steels. The final residual stress for the carbon steel after PWHT is
lower than that in 2-1/4CrMo weldment, due to its lower initial as-
welded residual stresses and its poor creep resistance, comparing
with 2-1/4CrMo steel. It is worth noting that the ratio of the final
residual stresses after PWHT between the two classes of material is
similar to the ratio of their initial residual stresses (at Time ¼ 1hr in
Fig. 14a), or the ratio of their initial yield strengths (Fig. 2a). The
corresponding creep strain developments are given in Fig. 14b.

Fig. 11. Finite element conduction heat transfer analysis results of weldment surface
and mid-thickness temperature during PWHT ramp-up and holding. 4. Discussions

4.1. Residual stress reduction estimation

One of key observations from the PWHT analysis results re-

Fig. 12. 2D analytical heat transfer analysis and temperature difference between mid-
thickness and surface as a function of ramp-up time and plate thickness (2L).
ported thus far is that the amount of the residual stress relaxation is
dominated by the amount of creep strain generated. Furthermore,
creep strain development does not show any significant de-
pendency on PWHT hold time as long as a critical PWHT temper-
ature is reached. Then, the question becomes if a relationship
between the stress relaxation and creep strain can be established
for a given class of materials with similar creep resistances.
Fig. 15 shows the stress evolutions as a function of creep strain
development at three PWHT temperatures. It is interesting to note
that the results from PWHT at different temperatures fall into
essentially the same straight line with a slope of Eave which
approximately represents the average Young's modulus (E) of the
material over a temperature range, further substantiating the
finding that plastic strain is negligible during uniform PWHT. Upon
a close examination, this temperature range seems to coincide with
a temperature (T0) signifying the onset of creep strain development
(see Fig. 9b) for a given PWHT temperature in a given material. The
higher the PWHT temperature (TPWHT) becomes, the more reduc-
tion in residual stresses can be seen in Fig. 15, recognizing that for a
given class of materials, there is an upper limit imposed on TPWHT
based on metallurgical considerations, such as those in Refs. [2,3].
The same trend can be seen for carbon steel weldments, as dis-
cussed in Ref. [10]. For a given creep initiation temperature T0, the
creep activation stress s0 can be determined from Fig. 15. Both T0
and s0 can be interpreted as the measurement of a material's
 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14 13

500
Hoop Residual Stress, MPa

X2.25-CRQ
400 Carbon Steel

300

200 Heating Holding Cooling

100
(a)
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Time, hrs
2.E-03
Fig. 16. Residual stress reduction fraction as a function of PWHT temperature fraction:
2-1/4CrMo versus carbon steel weldments.
Hoop Creep Strain

1.E-03

8.E-04
Heating Holding Cooling

4.E-04 X2.25-CRQ
(b)
Carbon Steel

0.E+00
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Time, hrs

Fig. 14. Residual stress and creep strain evaluation during PWHT with Holding Tem-
perature of 650  C e 2-1/4 CreMo versus carbon steel weldments.

Fig. 17. Elastic strain capacity as a function of temperature for three types of alloys.

reduction amount intended, Fig. 16 provides a simple method for

determining the PWHT temperature to be used and Figs. 12 and 13
(once established for a given set of furnace conditions) can be used
to determine a desirable ramp-up time in performing PWHT for
residual stress relief purpose.
It should be noted this study has been focused mostly on ferritic
steel weldments. The discussions given above should be inter-
preted with caution when applying to stainless steel components,
in which primary creep might play more important role in residual
stress relaxation process.
Fig. 15. Residual stress and creep strain relationship during PWHT and related pa-
rameters for generalizing stress relaxation e 2-1/4CrMo Weldments.
4.2. Effects of heating without creep

As observed in Section 3.1.1, creep is the dominant mechanism

resistance to creep during PWHT and can be conveniently used for
planning PWHT and quantifying its stress relief effects.
As an example for practical applications, a dimensionless plot is
provided in Fig. 16 for both 2-1/4CrMo and carbon steel weldments.
The ordinate represents a normalized residual stress reduction
srs0 from as-welded conditions by the creep activation stress s0,
The abscissa represents a normalized temperature difference
(TPWHTT0) by the creep initiation temperature T0. In doing so, each
class of steel materials (in terms of their creep characteristics) can
be represented by a single curve in the form of Fig. 16. If creep
activation stress s0 is not known, an estimated residual stress value
using API 579 Annex E [3] may be used. For a given residual stress
for stress relaxation during PWHT. As temperature increases, both
yield stress and Young's modulus decreases. For 2-1/4CrMo steel,
the rate of yield stress reduction is slightly higher than that of
Young's modulus reduction (Fig. 2). This resulted in a small amount
(about 10e20%) of elastic strain capacity reduction during heating
up to about 700  C, which leads to a maximum possible residual
stress reduction in the order of 10e20% for this case. If creep strain
development is not considered, the remaining elastic strain at a
material point will cause the residual stress to spring back as the
component returns to the ambient temperature. In general, the
magnitude of stress relaxation due to material yield strength and
Young's modulus reduction is directly related to the percentage of
14 P. Dong et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 122 (2014) 6e14
elastic strain that can be converted into plastic strain during
heating.
To quantitatively describe this phenomenon in the context of
incremental metal plasticity, the following equation holds true:
Dε ¼ Dεe þ Dεp þ DεT þ Dεc
where total strain increment Dε is equal the summation of elastic
strain (Dεe), plastic strain (Dεp), thermal strain (DεT), and creep
strain (Dεc) increments. If creep strain development is not consid-
ered, i.e., Dεc ¼ 0 in Eq. (3), the total strain increment Dε must be
equal to the thermal strain increment DεT since any material point
in the component under uniform PWHT conditions is free to
expand and contract. Therefore, the change in plastic strain incre-
ment (Dεp) is equal to the difference in elastic strain capacity, i.e.,
yield stress (sY) to Young's modulus (E) ratio, over a given tem-
perature difference. Therefore, Eq. (3) can be re-written as:
s  s 
Y Y
Dεp ¼ Dεe ¼  (4)
E TRM E TPWHT
The higher the difference, the more elastic strain is converted
into plastic strain during heating and thus leads to more stress
relaxation. For comparison purpose, Fig. 17 shows material elastic
strain capacity as a function of temperature for three different al-
loys. It can be seen that 2-1/4CrMoV shows a variation of about 20%
in elastic strain capacity while Inco 600 and 304 stainless steel
show much less a variation, as temperature varies from room to
about 800  C. Such elastic deformation capacity as a function of
temperature provides a direct measurement of residual stress relief
as a result of quasi-static heating to an elevated temperature, as
analytically described by Eq. (4).
5. Concluding remarks
The major findings from study on ferritic weldments may be
summarized as follows:
(a) Plastic strain effects on residual stress relaxation during
furnace-based PWHT are rather small at least for the mate-
rials and PWHT conditions investigated in this paper, which
can be quantitatively described as the difference between
material elastic strain capacity (sY/E) change from room
temperature to a given PWHT temperature for a given steel
and alloy type according to Eq. (4)
(b) The dominant residual stress relief mechanism in furnace-
based uniform PWHT is creep strain development. Creep
strain development or creep-induced stress relaxation oc-
curs far earlier than recognized by current Codes and Stan-
dards, e.g., even before a component reaches a target PWHT
temperature. Therefore, a significant economic benefit can be
realized by reducing the currently required PWHT hold time
if residual stress relief is the primary objective
(c) For each class of steel materials, there exist two characteristic
material-related parameters: creep initiation temperature T0
and creep activation stress s0. The former can be determined
by performing a series of parametric creep analyses, while
the letter can be inferred from material's yield strength de-
pendency on temperature. With the two parameters, stress
relaxation behavior in a welded component can be repre-
sented as a single curve between the normalized residual
stress reduction by s0 and PWHT temperature difference by
TPWHTT0 (see Fig. 16).
(d) Weldment thickness effects can be de-coupled from the
stress relaxation process and treated as a conduction heat
transport problem by calculating the minimum ramp up
heating time required for achieving a uniform temperature
anywhere within a welded component (see Fig. 13).
Acknowledgments
(3) The publication is made possible by the financial support by the
National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the
Korea government (MEST) through GCRC-SOP at University of
Michigan under Project 2-1: Reliability and Strength Assessment of
Core Parts and Material System. The authors are grateful to the
encouragement and oversight by Project PI Professor M. H. Kim
during the preparation of this report. The authors also acknowledge
the insight and valuable technical advices on the use of Omega
creep model and material properties provided by Dr. Martin Prager
of the Materials Research Council and Mr. David Osage of the Equity
Engineering Group during the course of this investigation.
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