Finite element analysis of temperature field, microstructure and residual stress in multi-pass butt-welded 2.25Cr-1Mo steel pipes

An attempt was made to develop a thermal-metallurgical-mechanical computational procedure based on ABAQUS code to simulate welding temperature field, microstructure and residual stress in multi-pass butt-welded 2.25Cr-1Mo steel pipes. In the present work, our emphasis was to predict welding residual stress considering the influence of solid-state phase transformation. In the proposed computational procedure, the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov equation was used to track the austenite-bainite transformation, and the Koistinen-Marburger relationship was employed to describe austenite-martensite change. Effects of volumetric change and yield strength change due to solid-state phase transformation on welding residual stress were investigated. The simulation results show that both volumetric change and yield strength change have significant effects on welding residual stress in 2.25Cr-1Mo steel pipes. The simulation results were compared with the experimental measurements, and the effectiveness of the developed computational producer was confirmed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.