Can a Weld in Welded Structure Be Made With Zero Residual Stress

While solving a sequence of seventeen optimization projects to predict the values of the side heater parameters that would be expected to minimize camber distortion in an edge welded bar, the design parameters that reduced distortion to effectively zero were not unique. This raised the question if any of the designs that minimized the distortion effectively to zero also minimized the residual stress. To answer this question three different measures of residual stress were evaluated for all 1451 designs. The Computational Weld Mechanics (CWM) optimization problem is to find the best point in the 4D space of side heater design parameters: flux, heated area, longitudinal and transverse distance from the weld such that the final residual stress is as low as possible (minimized). To evaluate the objective function for each point in the 4D design space, the associated 3D transient non-linear thermal visco-elastic-plastic stress analyzes was solved. A FEM mesh with 6600 8-node brick elements and 9438 nodes was solved for 166 time steps in 10 minutes of single-core CPU time. In the seventeen optimization projects, 1451 weld analyses were solved in 75 quad-core CPU hours by one person in two calendar weeks. The residual stress was effectively reduced to zero in some designs. These designs also reduced distortion to effectively zero. Whether a design that effectively reduces the residual stress to zero is unique remains an open question.Copyright © 2015 by ASME