Residual stresses associated with welds in austenitic steel

Two exploratory welds have been made with AISI 316 austenitic steel and Armex GT electrodes by the manual metal-arc process, and residual stress measurements made in the as-welded condition and after various periods of stress relief. The results show that substantial stress relief occurs at temperatures of 8500 and 7500C after 1 hr, but is not complete. The stress distributions are compared with those obtained from ferritic welds and the effect of differences in thermal expansion coefficients is examined using finite element analysis. (author)