Residual Stress Analysis of Bead Welded Low Alloy Steel Plate Specimens Subjected to Post Weld Heat Treatment

We developed a residual stress analysis method for bead welded low alloy steel JIS SQV2A (equivalent to ASTM A533B cl. 1) plates subjected to post weld heat treatment (PWHT). Two specimens were fabricated; each was a bead welded low alloy steel plate. One was in the as-welded condition (as-welded specimen) and the other was subjected to PWHT at 625°C (PWHT specimen). Strain gauges were used to measure the distributions of the residual stress in these specimens. The measurement data showed that the longitudinal stress at the center of a bead was 0 MPa and that in the heat-affected zone was 100 MPa. The transverse stress at the center of a bead was 200 MPa in the as-welded specimen. The absolute residual stress was decreased to less than 50 MPa for the PWHT specimen. We conducted finite element analyses to predict the distributions of welding residual stress in these specimens. The amount of phase transformation strain in low alloy steel was taken into account in the welding residual stress analysis, and creep strain was taken into account in the stress mitigation analysis. The results from the analyses agree well with the experimental results. These findings prove that welding residual stress can be simulated during a thermal elastic plastic (TEP) analysis by conducting a phase transformation and taking the generation of creep strain in the PWHT samples into consideration can be used to simulate that stress mitigation.