Residual Stress Influence on the Flexural Buckling of Welded I-Girders

Welded plate girders are used in heavy steel construction, industrial buildings and bride construction. Residual stresses are present in all plate structures. They are mainly caused by welding. In addiiton, they influence the load bearing capacity of these welded components. However, Eurocode (EC) does not provide any specific residual stress patterns for consideration of residual stress impact on load capacity. Hence, the decision for a particular problem has to be made by the designer. Many codes, including EC 3, permit the use of non-linear finite element analysis (FEA) for the design of structures. Recent developments in the last years, enabled the use of computerized models instead of laboratory experiments. In this scope, the FE-model should include all relevant factors properly. This important if considering that weld residual stresses can be a critical assessment factor. In addition, measuring of residual stresses is difficult, time consuming and expensive, it is therefore common to use founded distribution functions (e.g. Swedish BSK 99). Welding simulation tools offer new possibilities for a realistic assessment of weld-induced stresses and deformations. However, the modeling and the computational effort for large structural components is still not in a practicable range and a simplified methodology is in needed. As a result, a new approach (suitable for capacity analysis) is presented and detailed in the present contribution.