Residual stresses in LENS-deposited AISI 410 stainless steel plates

The residual stress in thin plate components deposited by the laser engineered net shaping (LENS®) process was investigated experimentally and numerically. Neutron diffraction mapping was used to characterize the residual stress in LENS-deposited AISI 410 stainless steel thin wall plates. Using the commercial welding software SYSWELD, a thermo-mechanical three-dimensional finite element model was developed, which considers also the effect of metallurgical phase transformations. The model was employed to predict the temperature history and the residual stress field during the LENS process. Several simulations were performed with the geometry and process parameters that were used to build the experimental samples. The origin of the residual stress distribution is discussed based on the thermal histories of the samples, and the modeling results are compared with measurements obtained by neutron diffraction mapping.