Numerical and experimental analysis of residual stresses in an arc welded lap joint and mapping of the residual stress field to a simplified finite element model

In this paper, welding residual stresses in an arc welded lap joint are evaluated by Finite element (FE) analysis of a continuum model considering Transformation induced plasticity (TRIP). The constitutive model for the plastic behavior including TRIP is implemented in user material subroutine (UMAT) of Abaqus/Standard. Numerical results are compared with experimentally measured residual stresses by X-ray diffraction technique. Moreover, the welding residual stresses in a continuum FE model are mapped to a simplified FE model using shell elements by moving least square approximation. The methodologies and results in this study show that the welding residual stresses in a local-level FE model of a welded joint can be mapped successfully to a simplified FE model.