Change of Weld Residual Stresses due to Loss of Material

The loss of material due to corrosion sometimes has a large influence on the change of weld residual stresses and residual deflections of steel structures. A new finite-element method is proposed that can take into account the effects of the volume change of material. By the use of this new method, it is expected that the change of weld residual stresses and residual deflections due to loss of material can be evaluated, if only the distributions of the residual stresses and residual deflections at the initial state as well as the corrosion profiles are known in advance. In order to confirm the validity of the proposed method, an experiment is carried out to measure the change of weld residual stresses and residual deflections by mechanically forming a groove on the surface of a welded steel box column that mimics a local corrosion loss pattern. From the experiment, it is observed that the change of the weld residual stresses and residual deflections caused by the groove is well predicted by the proposed analysis method as long as the corresponding initial values of the box column without groove are known in advance.