A study on the relief of residual stresses in weldments with explosive treatment

Explosive treatment is an efficient and economical technique in reducing welding residual stresses. The whole course of residual stress reduction is investigated both numerically and experimentally, in order to discover the mechanism of the explosive treatment and optimizing the technique. It is proved that the reflection and superposition of stress waves aroused by explosive loading lead to redistribution and remarkable reduction of welding residual stresses. Moreover, the optimum working conditions, such as detonator shape, width, location, explosive loading and velocities, are also discussed. The numerical results and the experimental ones are in reasonable agreement with each other.