Effect of Creep Mismatch Factor on Stress Redistribution in Welded Branch Pipes

This paper describe steady state stress distribution into the weld metal of welded branch components using detailed three dimensional elastic creep finite element analyses. In order to show the effect of the loading mode, this research is carried out under various loading conditions such as internal pressure, in-plane bending to the branch pipe and out-of-plane bending to branch pipe. Also, to generalize the unique aspect, three geometries of branch components including welded large bore branch, medium bore branch, and trunnion are considered. It is a well-known fact that the creep strain rate of welds material is faster than that of parent material. Therefore, the creep exponent and constants for the parent and weld metal are systematically varied to analyze under-matching, even-matching and over-matching conditions in creep. It can be shown that mismatch effect can be quantified as mismatch factor with specific characteristics.