Residual stresses and distortion in additively manufactured compositionally graded and dissimilar joints

•We seek to reduce the problem of residual stress and distortion in dissimilar joint.•Stress and distortion in graded joint are compared with those of dissimilar joint.•A thermo-mechanical model that considers convective heat transfer is developed.•Graded and dissimilar joints of 800H to 2.25Cr-1Mo steel and Ti-6Al-4V are tested.•The results quantitatively indicate improvements of performance of graded joints.