Influences of Overall and Local PWHT on Residual Stresses in the Under-Matching Welded Joints

Abstract

The under-matching welded joint is commonly used in engineering practice and the postweld heat treatment (PWHT) is the common method to reduce the residual stress in the welded joint, while the research on the under-matching welded joint after PWHT is few. The finite element software-ABAQUS is used to simulate the welding process and PWHT process of the under-matching welded joint which is the combination of CF62 (base metal) and 316L (weld) in this paper. The discussion of the influences of both overall and local PWHT on the residual stress in the under-matching welded joint is based on the experimental verification. And the influences of the two methods are compared to propose the better PWHT method to the under-matching welded joint. The results show that both overall and local PWHT can reduce the residual stress in the under-matching welded joint significantly, especially the lower transverse stress than the longitudinal stress. The distribution of the residual stress in the under-matching welded joint after the local PWHT is a little more uniform than that after the overall PWHT. The local PWHT is recommended to the under-matching welded joint in this paper.