Introduction of the Element Interaction Technique for Welding Analysis and Simulation

The residual stresses generated due to welding in pressure components may have several harmful effects, such as decrease in the resistance to cycling load and corrosive environments. The analysis of the welding process has been developed extensively in two and three dimensions. The element movement technique has been shown to be very effective in simulating the filler material deposition leading to a reduction in the analysis time. However, when attempted for wider fields of applications, it had some limitations, especially when moving the elements toward the base-plate. In this paper, the element interaction technique is introduced utilizing the concepts of both the element movement and element birth techniques. The new technique is verified versus the currently developed procedures. In this technique, the elements of the weld pool are held in place in contact with the elements of the base plate, and the interaction is made to be a function of time. This gave several flexibilities in modeling the welding process. Hence, the technique is then used to analyze simple fillet welding of a plate and circumferential butt welding of a pipe.