Effect of boundary restraints and welding sequence on residual stresses in weldments

Residual stresses play an important role in the design of welded structures since brittle fracture and fatigue failure of materials are largely affected by them. Use of external constraints to reduce the distortions in the weidments may influence the residual stresses. Hence it is necessary to study the effect of such external constraints on the residual stress distribution. Sequence of arc movement in double arc welding also has a fairly large effect on the residual stresses. In the present work, the effect of external restraints and sequence of arc movement has been studied using a thermo-elasto-plastic model with adaptive mesh generation technique.