Experimental and numerical study on the distribution of temperature field and residual stress in a multi-pass welded tube joint of Inconel 617 alloy

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the residual stress generation during hot wire gas tungsten arc welding (HW-GTAW) welding and conventional gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) in a multi-pass pipe weld of a nickel-based superalloy. HW-GTAW yields better mechanical properties at low heat input than conventional GTAW, and decreases the accumulation of residual stress significantly. The distribution of residual stress developed in the through-thickness direction is determined experimentally using the Deep hole drilling method. As a result of the analysis, it was observed that the highest residual stress arises in Fusion Zone (FZ) and Heat Affected Zone (HAZ). In the case of conventional GTAW the hoop stress was observed to be tensile and distributed over 70% of the weld whereas only 20% of the weld is found to be under tensile hoop stress in the case of HW-GTAW along the weld center. The results show that shrinkage at the weld HAZ region affects the stresses produced at the cylinder's outer surface. The bending effect created during the welding process is primarily responsible for the distribution of residual stresses in the weld zone. A comprehensive numerical analysis has been carried out using ABAQUS software to predict the level of thermal and residual stresses in the weld zone, FZ, and HAZ in the case of both welding process. A 2D finite element models have been developed to simulate the welding process using the ABAQUS FE tool based on coupled thermal-mechanical analysis. A double ellipsoidal heat source model has been developed using a DFLUX subroutine file to simulate the welding process during the numerical analysis. The predicted residual stresses were validated with the experimentally obtained results.