A numerical study on residual stress of high strength steel box column

As high strength steel (HSS) with yield stress of at least 690 MPa is still essentially only available in plate form, HSS box columns have to be “built-up” from plates by welding. During the welding process, residual stress is inevitably generated and could affect the column strength. In this study, a numerical investigation on the welding residual stress distributions of HSS built-up box column is carried out. Two finite element modelling packages, namely the general-purpose package ABAQUS and the welding-function-specific package SYSWELD are employed to simulate the welding and post weld heat treatment process of the column. The predicted results obtained were then validated with test data. In order to investigate the effects of different welding methods, two groups of models corresponding to flux-cored arc welding and submerged arc welding were analyzed. Furthermore, the effects of different heating treatment procedures are also simulated and compared.