Issue 35

A. Mehmanparast et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 35 (2016) 125-131; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.35.15 129 A similar numerical study on the welding sequence effects in multi-pass butt welding of double V-groove stainless steel thick plates has been conducted by Ji SD et al [12] in which finite element predications were validated through comparison with experimental data. A schematic illustration of the welding bead numbers and different cases of welding sequences considered by Ji SD et al [12] are shown in Fig. 7. As seen in Fig. 7 the bottom V-groove in this study was considered smaller than the top groove. It has been shown in [12] that the residual stress fields in the weld region are tensile for both through thickness (along Y axis) and transverse (along X axis) directions and the peak values were found near the center of the weld region. Finite elements simulations were conducted for different cases of the welding sequences shown in Fig. 7 and the peak residual stress results are summarized in Tab. 1. As seen in Tab. 1 the residual stress profiles and peak values were found sensitive to the welding sequence. Moreover, the numerical prediction results presented in [12] suggest that lower magnitude of residual stress profiles and peak values may be obtained when two V- grooves are evenly welded with filler metal (see case(e) and case (c) in Fig. 7). X Y Z Figure 7 : Illustration of welding bead numbers and sequences [12]. Welding sequence (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) Transverse stress σ x (MPa) 623 544 405 718 505 511 829 857 Through thickness stress σ y (MPa) 634 636 507 823 592 607 879 865 Table 1 : Predicted residual stress peak values for different cases of welding sequences [12]. D ISCUSSION he residual stress measurements and finite element prediction results available in the literature have shown that the welding sequence has significant influence on the residual stress profiles and peak values in multi-pass butt welded plates. The numerical studies performed to predict residual stress profiles in double V-groove butt welded plates suggest that although transverse stresses may be more sensitive to the welding sequence, the through thickness component of residual stresses generally exhibit higher values compared to transverse stresses. This means that if the welded plate is subjected to a loading condition parallel to the through thickness direction, a relatively small percentage increase or decrease in the peak values of through thickness residual stresses, as a result of the change in the welding sequence, may lead to significant changes in crack growth behavior of the material. It has been also noted that the transverse peak stress values shown in Fig. 6(b) are much smaller than those of predicted in Tab. 1. The lower σ x peak T