Numerical and Experimental Studies of Residual Stresses in Multipass Welding of High Strength Shipbuilding Steel

The article contributes, through numerical simulation based on models calibrated by experimental results, to better estimate residual stresses and distortions in welded structures representatives of ships and offshore platforms considering welding procedures relevant to shipyard current practices. A multipass welding is carried out to investigate the residual stresses in laboratory tests. The temperature at several positions on a plate sample is recorded with thermocouples and residual stresses are measured using an x-ray diffraction technique. Finite element (FE) models are developed in this study and experimentally validated. The three dimensional (3D) moving Goldak's double-ellipsoidal heat source model is employed in the simulations. A Levenberg-Marquardt neural network algorithm is employed to determine the geometric parameters of the heat source model. The technique based on neural network is applied to dimension the heat source later employed in the thermal analysis using 2D FE model to reduce the computer time of the numerical simulation and to make it feasible for shipbuilding industry applications. The numerical results of temperature and residual stress distribution are correlated with the experimental measurements. Finally, the effects of preheat and interpass temperatures on the residual stresses are investigated using numerical simulation. The effects of the transient releasing temperature on the residual stresses are also discussed.