Thermal analysis of girth welded joints of dissimilar metals in clad pipes : Experimental and numerical analysis

Welding of two dissimilar materials was carried out in-house with the aid of a Tungsten Arc weld with dynamic measurement of temperature profiles in the vicinity areas of the welding track using high temperature thermocouples. A comparison is shown of the measured transient temperatures versus the FEA simulations. Results showed a close match and laboratory tests revealed the occurrences at the welded joints, FZ and HAZ. Mechanical tests showed that for cladded pipes of thickness 2mm and 12mm, the weakest point of the joint is the HAZ. This is clearly supported by findings from the experimental analyses.