Welding simulation of large-diameter thick-walled stainless steel pipe joints. Fast computation of residual stress and influence of heat source model

There are many weld zones in the apparatus and piping installed in nuclear power plants and residual stress generated in the zone by weld process is the most important influence factor for maintaining structural integrity. Though the weld residual stress is frequently evaluated using numerical simulation, fast simulation techniques have been demanded because of the enormous calculation times used. Recently, the fast weld residual stress evaluation based on three-dimensional accurate analysis became available through development of the Iterative Substructure Method (ISM). In this study, the computational performance of the welding simulation code using the ISM was improved to get faster computations and more accurate welding simulation. By adding functions such as parallel processing, the computation speed was much faster than that of the conventional finite element method code. Furthermore, the accuracy of the improved code was validated by measurements. The influence of two different weld heat source models on the simulation results was also investigated and it was found that the moving heat source was effective to achieve accurate weld simulation for multi-pass welds. (author)