3D modelling of a multi pass dissimilar tube welding and post weld heat treatment of nickel based alloy and chromium steel

A dissimilar tube welding is performed between the nickel based Alloy617 and creep resistant steel VM12 using the former as the weld material. SYSWELD welding software is used to model the thermal and mechanical analysis. A readily available thermal history is used to calibrate the heat source input for the thermal analysis to generate the adequate thermal cycle by fitting the welding velocity, heat intensity factor of the GOLDAK heat source and the length of molten zone. The transient temperature field is then incorporated as the input for the mechanical analysis to obtain the residual stresses in which the phase transformation of the materials during welding is taken into account. Subsequently, the weld materials are characterized by using the Norton's creep law to determine the Norton parameters based on relaxation experiments. The residual stresses generated after the multi pass welding by SYSWELD is transferred into ABAQUS as the initial condition for the post weld heat treatment (PWHT) simulation. The simulations show that the residual stresses reduce in magnitude but still present even after PWHT.