Residual Stress Mapping for an Excavate and Weld Repair Mockup

This paper describes a sequence of residual stress measurements made to determine a two-dimensional map of biaxial residual stress (weld direction and transverse to the weld direction) in a mockup with a partial arc excavation and weld repair (EWR), as well as three additional maps of one component of residual stress. The mockup joins two dissimilar metal plates (SA-508 low alloy steel and Type 316L stainless steel) with a nickel alloy weld metal (Alloy 82/182). A partial groove is then excavated and filled in with SCC resistant Alloy 52M weld metal. The mockup was fabricated to investigate the effectiveness of the EWR mitigation methodology being investigated through the development of ASME Code Case N-847 to address stress corrosion cracking problems in reactor coolant system butt welds. The biaxial stress map is determined using a newly developed technique called primary slice removal (PSR) mapping, which uses both contour method and slitting measurements. In this case, the technique requires measuring the longitudinal stress along a plane and the long transverse stress remaining in a slice removed adjacent to that plane. This paper includes descriptions of the experiments and data analysis. The measured residual stresses follow expected trends and compare favorably to the results of computational weld residual stress modeling.