Design technique of deflection electrochemical etching to the study of residual stress after welding duplex stainless steel sheets

Welding is generally the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective technological process widely used in various industries and engineering fields such as shipbuilding, pipeline construction, offshore oil, gas production and others. Different physical metallurgical processes that occur during welding induce appearance of significant residual stresses that may have considerable influence on service behavior of welded structures and components, to cause even failures of welded joints. Welding operations generate residual stresses in both the surface and subsurface of welded joints. These residual stresses have a big influence on the functionality of the welding parts, thus their evaluation is of great importance. In terms of the fatigue strength and stress-corrosion cracking resistance, the compressive residual stresses are preferred to the tensile ones. In the present study is design the generation of residual stresses in welding process is evaluated by using the deflection-electrochemical etching technique. Finally, when comparing to the X-Ray diffraction method, it is stated that both the deflection-electrochemical etching and X-Ray diffraction methods can be used to evaluate the state of the surfaces, though the destructive one can give more detailed information about the residual stresses distribution.