Numerical investigation of residual thermal stresses in welded joints of heterogeneous steels with account of technological features of multi-pass welding

The paper describes a two-dimensional mathematical model to evaluate stresses in welded joints formed in multi-pass welding of multi-layered steels. The model is based on a system of equations that includes the Lagrange's variational equation of the incremental theory of plasticity and the Biot's variational principle for heat transfer simulation. In the constitutive equations, the changes in the volume which occur as a result of phase transitions can be taken into account. Therefore, the prehistory and impact of thermal processing of materials on macroscopic properties of the medium can be considered. The variational-difference method is used to solve both the heat transfer equation for calculation of the non stationary temperature field and the quasi-static problem of thermoplasticity at each time-step. The two-dimensional problems were solved to estimate the residual thermal stresses (for the case of plane stress or plane strain) during cooling of welds and assessing their impact on strain localization in the heat-affected zone under tensile and compressive loading considering differences in mechanical properties of welded materials. It is shown that at initial stages of the plastic flow, the residual stresses significantly affect the processes of stress concentration and localization of strains in welded joints. To estimate the model parameters and to verify the modeling results, the available experimental data from scientific literature obtained on the basis of the Satoh test for different welding alloys was used. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.