Residual stresses in steel I‐section beams strengthened by wire arc additive manufacturing

Abstract The residual stress and residual distortion of three WAAM‐strengthened steel I‐section beams have been measured experimentally and simulated numerically in the present study. The widely used sectioning method was employed for the measurement of residual stresses, with the results revealing that the original underlying residual stress distribution in the studied hot‐rolled steel I‐section was significantly altered after the addition of the WAAM material, primarily owing to the heat input from the manufacturing process. The overall bending distortion at the member level, also referred to as the pre‐camber, were measured by means of 3D laser scanning. A lumped‐layer sequential thermal‐mechanical finite element (FE) modelling approach was then used to simulate the residual stresses and distortion within the examined specimens numerically. Good agreement was found between the FE results and the experimental observations.