Welding is a key technology in the area of industrial production due to its flexibility and efficiency. However, new materials and welding techniques necessitate permanent research activities in order to keep up with the demands. A detailed knowledge about the process itself and the heat effects of welding, e.g., temperatures, distortions, and stresses, is the basis for a target-oriented optimization instead of a trial-and-error approach. Numerical welding simulation is a powerful tool to meet these demands. Complementary to an experimental investigation, it enables the analysis of the specimen during the welding process, commonly known as computational welding mechanics (CWM). Whereas simulation is nowadays a common tool in different development processes, the modeling of welding still remains difficult because of the multiple physical effects taking place. One of the most important problems for the user is the lack of knowledge about the material properties as input data for the simulation. Furthermore, any scattering of the data causes uncertainties that can have major effects on the calculations. The objective of this paper is to give an overview about the experimental determination and analysis of the material properties needed as input data for a welding simulation. The measurement techniques and the occurring deviations of the results are discussed. Additionally, the collected data for three representative alloys (dual-phase steel, austenitic steel, precipitation-hardenable aluminum alloy) are analyzed. Finally, the temperature-dependent thermophysical and thermomechanical material properties for these three alloys are given in a ready-to-use format for a numerical welding simulation.
Distortion optimisation of beam-welded industrial parts by means of numerical welding simulation
(2010)
The non-uniform heat input during the welding process leads to problematic permanent deformations of welded parts. The control of these welding distortions is, with the absence of the knowledge of the fundamental mechanisms responsible for these deformations, an extremely time and cost consuming iterative “trial-and-error” optimization process. The visualization of the involved physical phenomena, like temperature and distortions, .is an indispensable tool to clearly identify these mechanisms in order to adapt the welding parameters and clamping conditions target-oriented. Both experimental and virtual methods exist to obtain these physical data, however the possibilities to visualize them with experimental methods are laborious, expensive and limited in their application. Welding Simulation using finite element analysis (FEA) offers many benefits and has a great potential to reduce the experimental effort. Nevertheless, the industrial application of welding Simulation is not yet established widely because of reservations regarding the computation costs and the resulting accuracy for instance. In this paper, the results of a case study for a welding Simulation with an industrial background are presented. A welded assembly from the automotive industry has been investigated with numerical and experimental methods. A comparison between both methods demonstrates the Potentials of welding Simulation in terms of visualization. Furthermore, the numerical results reveal the possibilities of current resources. regarding calculation time and result accuracy of an industrial applied welding Simulation.