Abstract: Arc welding is an important joining process widely used in many industrial applications including production of automobile, ships structures and metal tanks. In welding process, the moving electrode causes highly non-uniform temperature distribution that leads to residual stresses and different deviations, especially buckling distortions in thin plates. In order to control the deviations and increase the quality of welded plates, a fixture can be used as a practical and low cost method with high efficiency. In this study, a coupled thermo-mechanical finite element model is coded in the software ANSYS to simulate the behavior of thin plates located by a 3-2-1 positioning system during the welding process. Computational results are compared with recent similar works to validate the finite element models. The agreement between the result of proposed model and other reported data proves that finite element modeling can accurately predict the behavior of welded thin plates.
Abstract: Among all mechanical joining processes, welding has
been employed for its advantage in design flexibility, cost saving,
reduced overall weight and enhanced structural performance.
However, for structures made of relatively thin components, welding
can introduce significant buckling distortion which causes loss of
dimensional control, structural integrity and increased fabrication
costs. Different parameters can affect buckling behavior of welded
thin structures such as, heat input, welding sequence, dimension of
structure. In this work, a 3-D thermo elastic-viscoplastic finite
element analysis technique is applied to evaluate the effect of shell
dimensions on buckling behavior and entropy generation of welded
thin shells. Also, in the present work, the approximated longitudinal
transient stresses which produced in each time step, is applied to the
3D-eigenvalue analysis to ratify predicted buckling time and
corresponding eigenmode. Besides, the possibility of buckling
prediction by entropy generation at each time is investigated and it is
found that one can predict time of buckling with drawing entropy
generation versus out of plane deformation. The results of finite
element analysis show that the length, span and thickness of welded
thin shells affect the number of local buckling, mode shape of global
buckling and post-buckling behavior of welded thin shells.