Numerical simulation of temperature field and residual stress in multi-pass welds in stainless steel pipe and comparison with experimental measurements

A computational procedure is presented for analyzing temperature fields and residual stress states in multi-pass welds in SUS304 stainless steel pipe. Based on the ABAQUS software, uncoupled thermal–mechanical three-dimensional (3-D) and two-dimensional (2-D) finite element models are developed. The finite element models are employed to evaluate the transient temperature and the residual stress fields during welding. Firstly, a 3-D model is developed to simulate the temperature fields and welding residual stresses. Secondly, based on the characteristics of the temperature fields and the welding residual stress fields, a 2-D axisymmetric model is also developed. The simulated result shows that the 2-D axisymmetric model can be effectively used to simulate the thermal cycles and the welding residual stresses for SUS304 stainless steel pipe. Using the 2-D model, a large amount of computational time can be saved. In this study, experiments are also carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed numerical models. The results of both 3-D model and 2-D model are in very good with the experimental measurements.