Residual Stress Analysis in Austenitic Stainless Steel Weldment by Finite Element Method

Residual stress in weldments is one of the major concerns in manufacturing industries especially in welding. They occur, sometimes during the initial processing of metals and sometimes during rolling, forging, casting etc. In welding these stresses develop due to non uniform cooling of the welded zone. Tensile stresses are primarily responsible for crack initiation and product failure. Residual stress may also lead to premature failure of the welded joints when subjected to hazardous conditions. There are various physical methods of detection of residual stress in weldments such as x-ray diffraction and deep hole drilling. Nevertheless, numerical method is also one of the most popular methods among researchers to solve various complex engineering problems. In this work, numerical simulation is carried out by creating a 2-D model of the Austenitic stainless steel weldment with various boundary conditions using ANSYS 15.0 software and the results are studied. The details of residual stress are explained with relevance to failure occurrence.