TY - CONF A1 - Perret, William A1 - Alber, U. A1 - Schwenk, Christopher A1 - Rethmeier, Michael ED - Wieland, H.-J. T1 - Efficient welding simulation of an automotive sheet metal assembly N2 - Fusion welding is widely used in the automotive industry to join metal structures. It is well-known that distortions and residual stresses occur during and after the welding process. Many procedures exist to decrease these negative heat effects of welding, but are often coupled with highly cost intensive experiments. The implementation of a welding Simulation tool to reduce this very expensive experimental procedures is therefore of high interest. Despite the fact that the automotive industry is a key sector for Simulation procedures, welding Simulation Software is nevertheless not yet widely implemented. This is mainly due to the complexity of the Simulation tools requiring expert users and the resulting high time to Solution. In this study, a new fast thermo-mechanical Simulation of a complex and large laser beam welded automotive sheet metal assembly with several non linear welds is simulated. Assumptions and simplifications of the complex physical welding phenomenon, which are made to keep the computational cost and the complexity of the Simulation in an industrial frame, are discussed. The calibration time of the phenomenological heat source model has been optimized with a very fast analytical thermal model and the resulting simulated temperature fields match perfectly with the measured ones. Additionally, the user experience and the time-to-solution are kept within a reasonable time frame for arr industrial environment. All Simulation results are validated with experimental results. T2 - SCT2011 - 3rd International conference on steels in cars and trucks CY - Salzburg, Austria DA - 05.06.2011 KW - Welding simulation KW - Temperature field KW - Laser beam welding KW - Fast calculation PY - 2011 SN - 978-3-514-00783-3 SP - 704 EP - 713 PB - Stahleisen AN - OPUS4-24088 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -