Control of welding distortion during gas metal arc welding of AH36 plates by stress engineering

摘要

Welding residual stress and distortion are strongly linked together. One of the ways to control or reduce the welding distortions is the manipulation of the generated stresses during welding, and final residual stresses exist in the workpiece (stress engineering). In this paper, the control of gas metal arc butt welding distortion of 500 × 250 × 6 mm3 AH36 plates by means of additional heat sources is studied using experimental and numerical approaches. To understand the distortion reduction mechanism, 3D finite element model has been constructed and validated by temperature, distortion and residual stress measurements together with microstructure investigation. The numerical results are compared to that of the experimental measurements.