Theoretical model of residual stress and warpage for wire and arc additive manufacturing stiffened panels

Abstract

Wire and arc additive manufacturing of stiffened ribs for fabricating large integral panel components holds promise for lightweight construction, but stress and warpage remain intractable problems. This work take stress in central lines as a research focus, theoretically analyzes stress evolution along central lines without a stress distribution hypothesis, then further develops prediction models of warpage, based on general beam theory. The stress and warpage models are then verified by experimental results. The results showed that below 40 layers, the stress in the top layer increased rapidly to the yield strength. Following the continuous deposition of up to 100 layers, stress increased slowly, then gradually trended to a constant level. After 100 layers of deposition, the top-layer-plane stress in the 10th layer decreased from 68 MPa to 5 MPa, and the plane stress in the 90th layer decreased from 296 MPa to 245 MPa. Post-heating treatment effect was important for temperature uniformity. The largest warpage (3.48 mm) happened when stiffener was designed as 30 layers.