Welding residual stresses are one of the main factors influencing the engineering properties of welded structures, and should be taken into account during designing and manufacturing products such as ships, bridges, etc. Recently, both computational and experimental methods play a significant role for providing residual stresses. The contour method (CM) became one of the most powerful techniques that can provide measurement of residual stresses normal to a plane of interest. In this method a component is cut at any plane of interest. Displacements normal to the cut surface are measured and then processed. Using the Thermal–Elastic–Plastic Finite Element Method (TEP-FEM), residual stresses after welding can be predicted. As well as, the elastic FEM can be used to reproduce residual stresses from measured longitudinal displacements in the CM. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different low transformation temperature (LTT) weld wires using TEP-FEM and the CM. In the simulation part, a computational approach is developed to numerically simulate both of welding and the CM. In the TEP-FEM, phase transformation is considered for LTT welds, additionally volume change and variation of mechanical properties with temperature are considered. In the simulated CM, welded specimens to be measured are replaced by TEP-FE models. Then the procedure of the CM is examined before applying it to real measurements. The simulated CM successfully predicted how the CM would reconstruct the residual stresses if applied experimentally. In the experimental part, welding is conducted using conventional and various LTT weld wires. Longitudinal residual stresses produced due to welding are measured using the CM. The results of TEP-FE simulation and the CM show the effectiveness of the different LTT weld wires in introducing compressive stresses in the weld. It is also observed that the applied LTT weld wires, which have almost the same martensitic transformation start temperatures, do not show big difference in the induced compressive residual stresses in the weld metal.
