Front. Mater. Sci. China 2009, 3(1): 7577 DOI 10.

1007/s11706-009-0005-4

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Discussion and calculation on welding residual longitudinal stress and plastic strain by nite element method
Hong-yuan FANG ()1, Xue-qiu ZHANG1, Jian-guo YANG1,2, Xue-song LIU1, Shen QU2
1 State Key Laboratory of Advanced Welding Production Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China 2 Shenyang Liming Aero-Engine Group Corporation, Shenyang 110043, China

Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2009

Abstract In recent years, some researchers have put forward the new viewpoint that the weld is merely formed during the cooling process, not concerned with the heating process. According to this view, it can be concluded that it is not the compressive but the tensile plastic strain that may remain in the weld. To analyze the formation mechanism of the longitudinal residual stress and plastic strain, nite element method (FEM) is employed in this paper to model the welding longitudinal residual stress and plastic strain. The calculation results show that both the residual compressive plastic strain and the tensile stress in the longitudinal direction can be found in the weld. Keywords residual stress, plastic strain, nite element method (FEM), temperature eld

comprehension of this problem, nite element method (FEM) was used to compute the welding residual longitudinal stress and plastic strain, and some useful results were obtained.

Experimental

Introduction

In this simulation, a three-dimensional nite element model for thermo-mechanical coupled analysis was developed using the MARC program. Small deformation FEM is used to simulate the welding distortion in a low carbon steel butt-welded joint 300 mm in length, 150 mm in width and 2 mm in thickness. From Fig. 1, it can be seen that element meshes are denser in the vicinity of the weld centerline, while the meshes gradually become coarser away from the weld zone. The FEM meshes comprise 6000 brick elements and 9213 nodes.

Due to the high local temperature eld, large residual stress and deformation will be produced during the welding process. Till now, problems involved with the welding residual stress and strain have attracted many researchers, and a large amount of work has been done to study them. In the middle of last century, some experiments were conducted to explore the distribution of the welding residual stress and plastic strain in the longitudinal direction [1]. However, it was found that those experimental processes were merely slightly different from the fusion welding. Hence, some researchers have put forward a new viewpoint on the residual stress and strain that the weld is actually formed during the cooling process, not concerned with the heating process, and it is not the compressive but the tensile plastic strain that is present in the weld [24]. In this paper, in order to achieve a better
Received September 22, 2008; accepted October 15, 2008 E-mail: jackeee90@163.com

Fig. 1 Finite element model

In the thermal analysis, solid-state phase transformation can be neglected because the inuence of phase transformation on welding deformation and welding residual stress is insignicant in the lower carbon steel [57]. The heat from the moving welding arc is applied as a volumetric heat source with a double ellipsoidal distribution, which

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Front. Mater. Sci. China 2009, 3(1): 7577

was proposed by Goldak et al. [8] and can be expressed as following equations. For the front heat source: p   6 3ff Qw 3x2 3y2 3z2 p exp 2 2 2 qx, y, z, t (1) a1 bc a1 b c For the rear heat source: p   6 3fr Qw 3x2 3y2 3z2 p qx, y, z, t exp 2 2 2 a2 bc a2 b c

(2)

where x, y and z are the local coordinates of the double ellipsoid model aligned with the welded pipe; ff and fr are parameters representing the fraction of the heat deposited in the front and the rear parts, respectively; Because the temperature gradient in the front leading part is steeper than that in the tailing edge, ff and fr are assumed respectively to be 1.4 and 0.6; Qw is the power of the welding heat source, which can be calculated according to the welding current, the arc voltage and the arc efciency; The arc efciency, , is assumed to be 67%; The parameters a1, a2, b and c are all related to the characteristics of the welding heat source.

Fig. 2 Temperature histories of node A

Results and discussion

Node A, on the top surface of the welding line center, is performed to describe the temperature eld, the stress eld and the strain eld, where node A are 100 mm away from both the original welding positions. Figure 2 shows the temperature circle curve of node A, which indicates that the maximum temperature value is 2013C. From Figs. 3 and 4, it can be seen that no plastic distortion and welding residual stress are generated in the initial stage, because there is no temperature eld that acts on the position to make it give birth to thermal stress and deformation in this stage. Since the temperature of the base material expands in front of the molten pool (which is constrained by surrounding base metal at low temperature), it can be deduced that only when the moving heat source impends over the position that the longitudinal compressive plastic stress and strain can increase rapidly. When the heating source gradually moves closer to the position, the base and welded metals get melted together into the molten pool. Thus the welding process transforms the heating process into the cooling one. During the cooling process, the tensile plastic strain and the tensile stress are generated in the weld so as to counterpoise the thermal contraction strain. However, the generated longitudinal tensile plastic strain in the cooling process cannot counteract the strains generated in the heating process, leading to the remaining of the compressive plastic strain that is not released completely. Hence, after welding, there is residual compressive plastic strain and tensile stress in the longitudinal direction of the weld.

Fig. 3 Longitudinal plastic strain histories of node A

Fig. 4

Longitudinal stress histories of node A

The nite element model is also employed to analyze the cooling process, according to the equation s = vt, where s is the longitudinal displacement, v is the welding speed, and t is the welding time. Based on FEM, it can be deduced that node A will be transferred into the cooling process after 20 s. Figures 5 and 6 reveal that the longitudinal tensile plastic strain and stress are generated in the weld during the cooling process. If only the cooling process is considered, it is obvious that the proposed new viewpoint is correct.

Hong-yuan FANG et al. Discussion and calculation on welding residual longitudinal stress and plastic strain

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However, the actual welding process includes not only the cooling process, but also the heating one. Moreover, the compressive plastic strain is generated in the heat-affected zone (HAZ), and the vicinity of HAZ plays an important role in the nal compressive plastic strain. Taking all these into consideration, the heating process can not be ignored at all. The main inconsistency of the new viewpoint compared with the traditional one is that, the melting phenomenon has been taken into consideration. Although the melting phenomenon changes the welded metal from the solid state to the liquid state, it still keeps the same measurement as one before melting due to the surrounding metal restraint and the short melting time.

Conclusions

(I) Both the heating process and the cooling process of welding should be taken into consideration when problems about the welding residual stress and strain are discussed. If only the cooling process is taken into consideration, the conclusion that there is merely tensile plastic strain in the weld is unilateral. (II) The calculation results show that the tensile plastic strain generated in the cooling process cannot counteract the compressive plastic strain generated in the heating process, resulting in the remaining of the compressive plastic strain in the weld after welding. (III) Because of the restraint of surrounding metal, the weld metal transient measurement stays invariable before and after melting.
Acknowledgements This research was sponsored by the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20070410900).

References
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Fig. 5 Longitudinal plastic strain histories of node A in the cooling process

Fig. 6 Longitudinal stress histories of node A in the cooling process