Thermal and residual stress anlayses of a welded stainless steel plate

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.

In this study, a welding simulation was analyzed numerically by using finite element method. Two-dimensional model of butt welded plate was conducted in ANSYS finite element package software. Transient thermal distribution on ST-37 plate was obtained for all time intervals until it reaches environment temperature. The initial temperature of ST-37 was considered 300 K, whilst the temperature of welded zone was assumed to be 1773 K. The enthalpy and density of the welded zone material were assumed to have temperature dependent values, although the non-welded zone of the steel was considered to have constant values. In accordance to this, plastic stresses were presented base on the elasto-plastic bilinear material behavior using structural analysis. Finally, residual stresses were found out by removing loads on the butt welded plate. Changing of residual stresses and spread of plastic zones according to cooling time were investigated.