Residual stresses in weld overlay tubes: A finite element study

Residual stresses and strains in a tube with circumferential weld overlay were analyzed by the finite element (FE) method. The objective of this work was to develop and verify a FE model, to determine the magnitude and distribution of residual stresses in the weld overlay tube, and to evaluate the significance of two contributing factors to residual stress: (1) difference in material properties between tube and weld material, and (2) thermal gradients in the weld. An axisymmetric FE model was developed to simulate the circumferential two-layer welding process of alloy 625 overlay on SA210 tube. The first layer was modeled as a gas metal arc welding process with filler metal, whereas the autogenuous gas tungsten arc welding process was modeled for the second layer. Neutron diffraction technique was used to experimentally determine residual elastic strains in the weld overlay tube. Comparison with the FE results shows overall good agreement Both the experimental and FE results show high compressive stresses at the inside tube surface and high tensile stresses in the weld overlay. This suggests that weld overlay may be used to relieve tensile or produce compressive stresses at the inside tube surface, which is significant for applications where crack initiation is found at the root pass of the joining weld.