Behavior of a girth-welded duplex stainless steel pipe under external pressure

This study attempts to investigate the effects that external pressure has on the residual stress behavior in a girth-welded duplex stainless steel pipe. At first, FE simulation of the pipe girth welding is performed to identify the weld-induced residual stresses and depressions using sequentially coupled three-dimensional (3-D) thermo-mechanical FE formulation. Then, 3-D elastic-plastic FE analysis is carried out to evaluate the residual stress redistributions in the girth-welded pipe under external pressure. The residual stresses and plastic strains obtained from the thermo-mechanical FE simulation are employed as the initial condition for the analysis. The FE analysis results show that the hoop compressive stresses induced by the external pressure significantly alter the hoop residual stresses in the course of the mechanical loading, i.e. the hoop residual stress distributions on both surfaces of the pipe weld shift downward considerably, whilst the axial residual stresses are little affected by the superimposed external pressure.