PREDICTION OF WELDING DEFORMATIONS BY FEM BASED ON INHERENT STRAINS

IntroductionIt is of importance to predict and control theresidual deformations caused by welding pro-cesses to ensure the accuracy of a welded produc-tion.Nowadays there are three ways to deter-mine the welding deformations:( 1 ) empiricalformulas or curves based on the experiments;( 2 ) thermo- elasto- plastic analysis by FEM;( 3)inherent strain method.The empirical formulasare only suited to the cases of simple plates orbeams that undergo a welding cycle close to theexperiment conditions. …

PREDICTION OF WELDING DEFORMATIONS BY FEM BASED ON INHERENT STRAINS

Welding deformations can be predicted by inherent strains that are assumed to be distributed in the welds and nearby area. This method is more convenient compared with the thermo elasto plastic finite element method because only elastic analysis is necessary. The problem is how to know the inherent strains in advance during deformation analysis. The relations between inherent strains and welding parameters based on some experimental curves and a 3 D FEM model were introduced. According to this study, the longitudinal and transverse inherent strains that are the most important factors on welding deformations can be determined. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is demonstrated through the deformation analysis of a large welded cylinder with multipass welds as an example.