Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Finite element simulation on effect of bevel angle and filler material on

tensile strength of 316L stainless steel/Monel 400 dissimilar metal
welded joints
Cherish Mani ⇑, Sozharajan Balasubramani, R. Karthikeyan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus, P.O.Box. 345 055, United Arab Emirates

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the present study, an attempt has been made to analyze the tensile testing of 316L stainless steel/
Received 17 October 2019 Monel 400 gas tungsten arc welded joints. The process parameters considered for the study are filler
Received in revised form 5 December 2019 materials and bevel angle used for butt joints. Finite element simulation of tensile testing is attempted
Accepted 26 December 2019
for different bevel angles and filler wires. Transient structural analysis has been used for simulation.
Available online 28 January 2020
Linearized equivalent stress distribution is obtained along the axial length of the specimen.
Engineering stress-strain curve has been drawn using the reaction force and displacement. Comparison
Keywords:
has been made between the experimental results and numerical solution. The results agree to a greater
Dissimilar metal welding
Gas tungsten arc welding
extent till the ultimate tensile region.
Austenitic stainless steel Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Monel alloy Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Con-
Tensile strength ference on Recent Advances in Materials & Manufacturing Technologies.
Numerical simulation

1. Introduction such welds witness variation of optical microstructure along differ-

Austenitic Stainless Steels (ASS) are extensively used in petro-
chemical, paper making and biomaterials-based manufacturing
industries due to their excellent properties such as corrosion resis-
tance, weldability and formability with moderate tensile strength
[1]. Since they are being used in several manufacturing equipment,
welded joints are essential with similar and dissimilar materials.
Dissimilar metal welds (DMW) are frequently used in welded con-
structions and joint efficiency is related to performance of the
whole structure. ASS is often welded to different materials ranging
from low carbon steel to nickel alloys [2]. DMW pose greater chal-
lenges due to the difference in the physical and metallurgical prop-
erties of the parent metals and fillers used for welding. DMW of
ASS often lead to formation of d ferrite, r phase, sensitization
and stress corrosion cracking. ASS based DMW are more specifi-
cally used in energy conversion systems [3]. ASS/Ni alloy based
DMW joints find applications boiler feed water heat exchangers
in nuclear industries. Gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) is most
commonly used for ASS based for DMW. The microstructure of
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: cherishmani@gmail.com (C. Mani).
ent zones of welded joints on either side and the hardness gener-
ally increases towards the weldment [1]. The weld strength of
GTAW joints depends on different process parameters such as weld
current, arc voltage, welding speed and gas flow rate. Extensive lit-
erature is available related to analysis of these parameters. Selec-
tion of filler wires is an important phase in DMW due to the
variation of properties between parent metals.
The composition and size of the filler wire decides the geometry
and metallurgical characteristics of the weldment which in turn
decides the tensile strength and corrosion resistance of the joints.
ERNiCrMo-3 and ERNiCrMo-4 are Ni-based fillers are found to per-
form well for ASS/Monel alloy DMW [4]. Geometry of the welded
joints is another important parameter which will influence the
stress distribution along the welded joints. In butt welded joints,
bevel angles play important role which normally vary between
30 and 45°. The welded joints normally act as stress concentration
areas. To analyse the stress distribution along the welded joints,
numerical simulation may be used [5]. It is an effective tool to
analyse the effect of weld geometry. Different regions of the
welded joint can be modelled in finite element analysis and effect
of different parameters on the quality characteristics of the welded
joints can be assessed [6].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.12.353
2214-7853/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Materials & Manufacturing
Technologies.
 C. Mani et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053 1049

The objectives of the present study include the following:

Dissimilar metal welding of SS 316L/Monel 400 alloy using

GTAW.

Effect of filler material and bevel angle in butt weld.

Numerical simulation of tensile testing using ANSYS
WORBENCH.

Comparison of simulation results with experimental results

2. Experimental procedure

2.1. Materials
Fig. 1. Weld groove typical section.
The properties of austenitic stainless steel are valued to indus-
try owing to high ductility, excellent toughness, strength, corrosion
resistance, weldability. The test coupons are made from 3 mm Table 2
plates of Monel 400 and stainless steel 316L of dimensions Welding parameter and configuration.

200 mm (L)  20 mm (W) with filler material of SS316, Monel Filler wire (3 conditions) ENiCrFe-5 SS 316L wire Monel 400 wire
and ENiCrFe-5. Table 1 shows the chemical composition of materi- Groove angle (3 V-type 60° V-type 70° V-type 80°
als used for specimen preparation by GTAW process. Conditions)
Bevel angle 30° 35° 40°
Welding current 80 amps
2.2. Welding conditions Plate thickness 3 mm
Root face thickness 1 mm
Root opening 2 mm
Gas Tungsten arc welding (GTAW) is referred as the welding Polarity DCEN
process which uses a non-consumable tungsten electrode to pro- Welding speed 2.5 mm/s
duce the weld. Monel 400 plates with stainless steel 316L are Shielding gas (Argon) 8 LPM
welded with filler material ENiCrFe-5, SS 316L and Monel wire Backing gas (Argon) 5–7 LPM
Tungsten size and type 1/800 , 2% throated tungsten
by GTAW process. The edge preparation with V grove with differ-
ent bevel angles of 30°, 35° and 40°, with a root gap of 2 mm fit-
up was done to carry out weld as shown in Fig. 1. The weld spec-
imens were welded under 3 different bevel angles with the filler 3. Finite element simulation
wires of ENiCrFe-5, SS316 wire, Monel wire producing 9 weld test
coupons are listed in Table 2. The weld current in the range of 80– 3.1. Geometry modelling
85 Amp, polarity as DCEN, shielding gas of Argon 8 LPM and back-
ing gas of argon with a flow rate 5–7 LPM were established by trials Tensile test specimens with 30° bevel angle in the weld zone are
in line with the recommendations of filler wire manufacturer and modelled in ANSYS SPACE CLAIM, material properties were
the parameters are listed in Table 2. assigned for different zones namely Monel alloy, weld material
and SS 316L stainless-steel alloy. Nonlinear - Bilinear Isotropic
hardening properties were provided for these three materials.
2.3. Tensile test standard ANSYS geometry modelled for the study is shown in Fig. 3 and
weld zone with respect to 30° bevel angle shown in Fig. 4(a) and
The weld test coupons upon completion of weld were further (b). Properties of base materials and weld materials in the model
visually checked followed by ultrasonic test as per AWS D1.1 stan- are presented in Table 4.
dards for weld flawless and defects. Upon acceptance of the weld
coupons, tensile test specimens were prepared by water jet cutting
with dimensions in accordance with ASTM E8/E8M-13a, ‘‘Standard
Test Methods for Tension Testing of Metallic Materials”. The 3.2. Contact and target definitions
dimensional sketch of tensile test coupon is shown on Fig. 2 [7].
Bonded contact is provided between weld material and base
material on either side. Bonded contact defines no penetration
2.4. Plan of experiments and sliding between the faces or edges. Weld material face defined
as contact region and the remaining two material faces act as tar-
The range of variable parameters are listed on Table 3 for the get regions. In bonded contact, augmented Lagrange formulation is
plan of experiments. The experiments were done by varying one used since small amount of penetration is allowed during welding
parameter at a time. Tensile test on the 5 test coupons based on between different zones. Contact behaviour was assumed to be
the different variable parameters were test on SHIMADZU 100 kN asymmetric since contact elements are defined on weld surface
servopulser dynamic testing machine. and target elements defined on the other two surfaces. For

Table 1
Chemical composition of materials.

Material C Cr Fe Mn Ni P S Si Mo Cu Ti Co Nb
SS 316L 0.03 17 65.64 2 12 0.05 0.03 0.75 2.5 – – – –
Monel 400 0.3 – 2.5 2 63 – 0.024 0.5 – 31.676 – – –
ENiCrFe-5 0.04 14–17 6–10 1.0 70 (min) 0.03 0.015 0.35 – 0.5 – 0.12 1.5
1050 C. Mani et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053

Fig. 2. Tensile test coupon dimensions.

Table 3
Experimental plan.

Specimen No 1 2 3 4 5
Filler wire ENiCrFe-5 ENiCrFe-5 ENiCrFe-5 Monel wire SS 316 wire
Bevel Angle 30° 35° 40° 30° 30°

Fig. 3. Geometry modelling of tensile test specimen.

Fig. 4. (a) Weld zone with 30° bevel angle; (b) Meshed model with tetrahedron element.

Table 4
Materials properties of base material and weld material.
650
Material Properties MONEL 400 SS 316L ENiCrFe-5
Density (kg/m3) 8800 8000 8500 600

Young’s Modulus (GPa) 179 193 190

Linearized Equivalent Stress, MPa

Poisson Ratio 0.3 0.31 0.3 550

Yield Strength (MPa) 240 205 275

Tangent Modulus (MPa) 1450 1800 1750 500

Ultimate Strength (MPa) 550 515 630

450

asymmetric behaviour, only the contact surfaces are constrained 400

from penetrating the target surfaces.
350

3.3. Meshing
300
2000 6000 10000 14000 18000
Number of Elements
Entire model was meshed using quadratic 3D tetrahedrons ele-
ments (Fig. 4b). Tetrahedron element has less degrees of freedom Fig. 5. Mesh convergence curve for weld specimen.
 C. Mani et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053 1051

Fig. 6. Loading and boundary conditions.

Fig. 7. Linearized equivalent stress.

700 500
WELD MATERIAL 30DEG
WELD MATERIAL 35DEG
WELD MATERIAL 40DEG
450
600 MONEL 30DEG
SS316L 30DEG
400
500
350
Linearized Stress,MPa

Stress,MPa

400 300

250
300

200
200
150 FEM WELD MATL 30DEG
FEM WELD MATL 35DEG
100 100 FEM WELD MATL 40DEG
FEM MONEL 30DEG
FEM SS316L 30DEG
50
0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Length, mm Strain

Fig. 8. Linearized equivalent stress for all specimens. Fig. 9. Engineering stress-strain curves generated from FEM simulation.

compared to hexa-hederal elements and to provide solution at a

faster rate. It is necessary to have fine mesh density mainly in
the areas of high stress gradients and coarser mesh density in areas
of low stress gradients or where the magnitude of the stresses is
not of much interest. The effect of sphere of influence has been
used to get fine mesh density in the critical areas. Pinch control
has been used to merge mesh nodes in close proximity after mesh-
ing using a given tolerance which removes the bad elements from
the model results more refined meshing.
Mesh convergence study (mesh sensitivity analysis) in finite
element analysis, is normally done to determine the optimum
number of elements to increase the accuracy of the solution with
less computational time. For the present case, the analysis was per-
formed based on the maximum linearized equivalent stress. Ele-
ment size is varied from 5 mm to 2 mm in whole body and
1.5 mm to 0.5 mm for critical areas. The number of elements were
increased from 2847 to 17,522. After that mesh convergence, an
element size of 2 mm has been used for the whole body and ele-
ment size of 0.5 mm has been used for in the critical areas (weld
and near weld zones) by using sphere of influence. Fig. 5 shows
the mesh convergence curve for the linearized equivalent stress.
1052 C. Mani et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053

500 be inferred that, as the bevel angle increases, the stress values were
decreased due to increase in area. ENiCrFe-5 (weld material) pos-
450
sess maximum strength when compared to Monel alloy and SS
400 316L alloy. Hence the stress values are maximum for weld material
when compared to the other two filler wires.
350
Stress,MPa

300
4.2. Stress-strain curve
250
The reaction force from simulation and the corresponding dis-
200 placements were recorded for different specimens and using those
values, engineering stress-strain curves were drawn. The simula-
150 WELD MATL 30DEG
WELD MATL 35DEG tion readings were obtained till ultimate tensile strength region
100 WELD MATL 40DEG and presented in Fig. 9. The ENiCrFe-5 (weld material) possess
MONEL 30DEG
SS316L 30DEG higher stress values when compared to filler wires made of parent
50
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 materials (Monel and SS 316L) since the strength of weld material
Strain is higher than both alloys. The increase in bevel angle resulted in
decreased stress level for ENiCrFe-5 (weld material). The simulated
Fig. 10. Experimental engineering stress-strain curves. results may be compared with the experimental results which are
presented in Fig. 10. It can be seen for all the cases considered, the
simulated stress strain curves are close to experimental curves. The
Table 5
mean absolute error calculated between experimental and simu-
Mean absolute error for the stress-strain curves.
lated values are presented in Table 5. Trend of the curves are
Filler and bevel Weld, Weld, Weld, Monel 400, SS 316L, almost similar, however, the values are little different due to the
angle 30° 35° 45° 30° 30°
material model considered for the study. The FEM analysis pro-
Mean absolute 0.4147 7.8247 11.5192 7.7624 7.7417 posed may be used for prediction of stress strain curves for tensile
error, MPa testing. However, the fracture behaviour cannot be predicted by
this analysis since the fracture criterion has not been defined
which has been left for future study.

3.4. Loading and boundary conditions

One end of the specimen (Monel alloy side) was fixed and the
end of the specimen (SS 316L side) was subjected to displacement
in X direction as per experimental boundary conditions (Fig. 6).
Analysis was performed in transient structural analysis up to 70
steps with 0.2 mm displacement periodic increments till 14 mm.
The maximum displacement was chosen based on experimental
observation. End of each time step is 1 sec. Applied displacement
may result in geometry nonlinearity and hence large deflection
was provided during analysis.
4. Results and discussions
The proposed simulation was carried out for all the experimen-
tal conditions specified in Table 3 and the performance was com-
pared. Linearization stress along the length of the weld has been
recorded to study the effect of bevel angle and filler material. For
ENiCrFe-5 all three angles were considered for other two filler
wires, 30° bevel angle was used. The stress strain experimental
results were compared with the FEM results. The analysis is limited
to simulation of stress distribution up to ultimate strength level
and fracture behaviour is not considered.
4.1. Linearized equivalent stress
Stress linearization is a technique to decompose actual stress
distribution across thickness into membrane (average) stress and
bending (linearly varying) stress, so that net force and moment
across the thickness remains same. Fig. 7 shows the linearized
stress distribution along the axial length of the specimen. The joint
region has maximum stress on either side of the weld since the
bonded connections exist along these regions which hold the base
materials with weldment. Value of stress in SS 316L side is lesser
than Monel side due to difference in strength. The linearized stress
distribution has been plotted for all the simulations in Fig. 8. It can
5. Conclusion
Finite element simulation of tensile testing of Monel/SS 316L
has been performed using transient structural analysis. The effect
of bevel angle and filler wire on stress-strain behavior and lin-
earized stress distribution are analyzed. The stress strain curves
generated using FEM simulation were compared with experimen-
tal results and are found to be close. The weld material ENiCrFe-
5 has higher strength than the filler wires made up of the base
materials. The increase in bevel angle decreased the linearized
stress. FEM simulation can be used for prediction of stress-strain
curves and further analysis is required to analyze the fracture
behavior. Implicit/Explicit dynamics may be performed to simulate
the fracture of the tensile test carried out. Consideration residual
stress due to thermal loading during welding will improve the
accuracy of prediction which has not been attempted.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Cherish Mani: Investigation, Resources. Sozharajan Balasubra-
mani: Software, Formal analysis. R. Karthikeyan: Conceptualiza-
tion, Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
Authors are grateful to BITS Pilani, Dubai campus for the
encouragement and support for the research work.
 C. Mani et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 28 (2020) 1048–1053 1053

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