A residual stress measurement and numerical analysis round robin on a three-pass slot nickel-base repair weld

Abstract

The activities within a European network to develop accurate experimental and numerical methods to assess residual stresses (RS) in structural weldments are reported. The NeT Task Group 6 or TG6 project examined an Alloy 600 plate containing a three-pass slot weld made with Alloy 82 consumables. A number of identical specimens were fabricated and detailed records of the manufacturing history were kept. Parallel RS measurement and simulation round robins were performed. RS were measured using neutron diffraction at five different instruments. The acquired database is large enough to generate reliable mean profiles, to identify clear outliers, and to establish the systematic uncertainty associated with this non-destructive technique. TG6 gives a valuable insight into the real-world variability of diffraction-based RS measurements, and forms a reliable foundation against which to benchmark other measurement methods. The mean profile of measured RS was used to validate the accuracy achieved by the network on the prediction of RS.