Investigation of the effect of welding path on residual stresses and deformations in peripheral welding of steel pipe

In this paper, the effective factors in the welding process and its effects such as residual stresses in the peripheral welding process of a pipe have been investigated using Abaqus software. The analysis was performed in two stages, thermal and mechanical. First, in thermal analysis, the temperature distribution of the welding process was obtained, and then the obtained temperature field was used as a load in mechanical analysis to obtain the distribution of residual stresses and deformations. The effect of different parameters such as welding speed, heat input, and sequence of welding path on residual stress values ​​and deformations were investigated. Results showed that with a 50% increase in electrode speed, tensile and compressive stresses on the outer surface of the pipe showed an increase of 43.47 and 15.15%, respectively. Also, a 20% increase in heat input led to a reduction of 2.6 and 18.18% in tensile and compressive stresses on the outer surface of the pipe. Also in this paper, an optimal path for peripheral welding of pipes is presented.