Weld residual stress is a troublesome problem in nuclear power plant, because it can accelerate crack growth in weld region. For low alloy steel, Post Weld Heat Treatment (PWHT) is essentially needed to relieve residual stress and to temper the hard regions in the heat affected zone (HAZ). Local PWHT is used when it is impractical to heat the whole component in a furnace. The rules and practices of related codes and standards, such as ASME and AWS, associated with local PWHT are quite different. For example, according to ASME Section III, the minimum width of heated band at each side of the weld shall be the thickness of the weld or 2 in., whichever is less. While, according to ASME B31.1, the width of heated band shall be at least three times the wall thickness at the weld of the thickest part being joined.
In this paper, the status of the related code and standard associated with local PWHT is briefly summarized, and baseline information on local PWHT is explained based on FEA (Finite Element Analysis) results and optimized local PWHT parameter is suggested to support current code of practices.
