The purpose of this study is to establish the predictive method of welding distortion and residual stress for the channel I butt SA (submerged arc) weldment using FEA. In order to do it, the heat input model for the weldment was defined as the combined heat source with the surface heat flux of gaussian distribution and volumetric heat source uniformly distributed within weld groove by comparing the shapes of molten pool and temperature distribution obtained by FEA with those of experiments. The arc efficiency of SA welding for two-dimensional FE analysis was evaluated as 0.85. The welding distortion and residual stress of the weldment obtained by FEA and heat input model proposed have a good agreement with those obtained by experiment. Based on the results, it was suggested that the proper heat input model should be required to evaluate the welding distortion for weldment.