Misorientation Changes and Residual Stresses Redistribution after Welding. A Physical Simulation

Welding is widely used in the manufacture of steel products. Metallurgical processes during welding produce residual stresses in different zones of the welded parts. Welding residual stresses, particularly tensile stresses, can significantly impact the reliability and the integrity of the welded components. Our recent works report the effect of residual stress redistribution in a relatively short, up to two weeks, period after the welding procedure. The hypothesis that the observed stress relaxation phenomenon is associated to the microstructure evolution that occur in the material after the end of the welding procedure was proposed. To prove this hypothesis a physical simulation of the influence of the welding thermal cycles on the base metal with GLEEBLE equipment was performed. Using SEM EBSD, technique the variation of grain boundary misorientation accompanied by the residual stresses redistribution in the first days after welding thermal cycles simulation were observed.