Sensitivity Analysis of Some High Efficiency Computational Methods for Welding Process Numerical Simulation

The calculations of the temperature fields, the residual stress distributions and the displacement distributions of welding process by using three-dimensional thermo-elastic-plastic FEM (finite element method) are time-consuming. Some high efficiency computational methods aiming at characteristics of welding process in welding process numerical simulation were proposed such as segmented moving heat source, adaptive mesh technique, similitude principles, special transition element, material modeling at high temperature and parallel computation etc. It has proved that using one method mentioned above can reduce the solution time of welding process numerical simulation. In this paper a butt weld of a thin aluminum plate is investigated by means of three-dimensional thermo-elastic-plastic FEM on the basis of commercial software ABAQUS. Four schemes are carried out for achieving the calculation efficiency of different schemes: (a) moving heat source with solid element; (b) segmented moving heat source with solid element; (c) moving heat source with shell to solid transition; (d) segmented moving heat source with shell to solid transition. The simulated results show that although in the weld zone the residual stress distributions have some difference, the residual stress distributions are very close away from weld zone for four schemes. The comparison of the computational time for the four schemes indicates that segmented moving heat source with shell to solid transition not only can reduce the calculation time but also can improve the efficiency of modeling process compared to the other schemes.