A Study on the Comparative Evaluation of Welding Residual Stresses of Pipes in Power Plants using Saw-cutting and Indentation Methods

It has been widely recognized that the residual stress of the weldment affect the integrity of steel structures and cause an initiation of crack in the welded regions. Since the power plants adopt a variety of welding processes, it is necessary to know the distribution and magnitude of residual stresses. This paper has attempted to investigate the validity of the saw cutting method and the indentation method to measure the residual stresses in the steel plates. The residual stresses in the specimens of hot reheater pipes, cold reheater pipes and feed water lines in power plants were determined by the saw cutting method and the indentation method. The data were compared and reviewed for the validity of the methods.