FINITE ELEMENT RESIDUAL STRESS PREDITION AFTER PWHT OF BRANCH-

PIPE CONNECTION

Philippe Bastid
TWI Ltd, Granta Park, Great Abington, Cambridge CB1 6AL, UK

Email: philippe.bastid@twi.co.uk

ABSTRACT

Welding of thick-walled components tends to generate large regions of high tensile residual stresses
which can promote the possibility of brittle fracture or corrosion cracking. The magnitude of residual
stresses can be reduced by post weld heat treatment (PWHT). When the component is too large to be
furnace heat-treated, local PWHT of a circumferential band (for a pipe), or a circular patch (for a
header) is permitted in some codes and standards. British and American codes recommend
procedures for local PWHT, including the size of the heat treated zone. Following this
recommendations avoid the possibility of the generation of residual stresses of significant magnitude
in the zone of the local heat-treatment.

There is an industrial demand for the reduction of the size of the heat-treated zones, either to protect
existing connections and heat-sensitive attachments, or to reduce the energy consumption. However,
the temperature gradients can be harmful and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) can be a used to
optimise the heat treatment procedure by making predictions of the residual stresses.

The current paper presents the use of FEA to calculate the residual stresses after local PWHT of a
branch-pipe connection. Constant and variable width soak bands have been investigated. Analyses
were performed assuming either elastic, or elastic-plastic and creep materials models. Residual
stresses were predicted and the results were compared using different criteria issued from standards
and publications.