APPLICATION OF THE CONTOUR METHOD TO （等高线的方法的应用）.pdfVIP

APPLICATION OF THE CONTOUR METHOD TO VALIDATE RESIDUAL STRESS PREDICTIONS * Foroogh Hosseinzadeh, P John Bouchard The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK f.hosseinzadeh@open.ac.uk Abstract Welding is the most widespread method employed to join metallic components in nuclear power plants. This is an aggressive process that introduces complex three-dimensional residual stresses of substantial magnitude into engineering components. For safety-critical applications it can be of crucial importance to have an accurate characterisation of the residual stress field present in order to assess plant lifetime and risk of failure. Finite element modelling approaches are being increasingly employed by engineers to predict welding residual stresses. However, such predictions are challenging owing to the innate complexity of the welding process [1] and can give highly variable results. Therefore, it is always desirable to validate residual stress predictions by experimental data. This paper illustrates how the contour method of measuring residual stress can be applied to various weldments in order to provide high quality experimental data. The contour method results are compared with data obtained by other well-established residual stress measurement techniques such as neutron diffraction and slitting methods and show a very satisfactory correlation. Keywords: Residual stress, measurement techniques, weldments, contour method. 1 Introduction Safety cases for high integrity components in operating nuclear power plants must demonstrate very low risk of failure, especial