Simulation of Residual Stress and Distortion in Welded Carbon Steel Pipe by Considering Solid-State Phase Transformation

In this paper, a sequentially coupled 3-D thermal-metallurgical-mechanical analysis is developed to predict welding residual stresses and distortion during single-pass tungsten inert gas arc welding (TIG) of low and medium carbon steel pipes (S45C and S15C). The axial and hoop residual stresses and welding deformation by allowing volumetric change due to solid-state phase transformation are determined. In ABAQUS finite element simulation, the moving heat source is modeled by a user subroutine [DFLUX], and a user subroutine [UEXPAN] is applied for computing the fraction of martensite and volume change during heating and cooling. The simulation results show that for the S15C pipe, solid-state phase transformation has an insignificant effect on welding residual stress and distortion but for the S45C pipe the solid-state phase transformation reduces the axial residual stress in the fusion (FZ) and heat-affected zones (HAZ). Also, the sign of hoop residual stress changes in FZ, and its value of it decreases in HAZ.