Experimental and simulation based analysis of residual stresses developed during the Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding of AISI 202 stainless steel

Abstract

Residual stresses are in equilibrium within a part and known as locked in stresses within the material after engineering operation, without any external loads or thermal gradients. The main goal of this study is to investigate the residual stresses (maximum principle stress) developed during Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding of AISI 202 SS plates by Hole Drilling Method (HDM). For hole drilling technique, rectangular type rosette had attached on the welded plate at 15 mm from center weld line and transformations equations were used to directly calculate the values of residual stresses from the experimental strain data obtained through the strain gauge rosette as mentioned in ASTM E837-13. Taguchi method is employed for statistical design of experiment (DOE) to analyze the effect of welding parameters including voltage, welding speed and electrode wire feed rate on the residual stresses. By using statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA), it has been concluded that the most contributaional effect on the residual stress is related with the voltage while the other two have less dominant effect. Abaqus software is employed for simulating the residual stresses and these results are compared with results of hole drilling method