FEM prediction of welding residual stresses in a SUS304 girth-welded pipe with emphasis on stress distribution near weld start/end location

A finite element approach based on Quick Welder software is developed to simulate welding temperature field and welding residual stress distribution in a 3D multi-pass girth-welded pipe model. The characteristics of welding residual stress distributions in a SUS304 stainless steel pipe induced by heating with a tungsten inert gas arc welding torch are investigated numerically. Meanwhile, an emphasis is focused on examining the welding residual stress distributions in and near the weld start/end location. Moreover, the residual stresses predicted by the present computational approach are compared with the measured data; and the comparison suggests that the numerical simulation method has basically captured the feature of welding residual stress distribution near the weld start/end region. The numerical simulation results show that both the hoop and the axial residual stresses near the weld start/end region have sharp gradients and are significantly different from those in the steady range.