Free Expansion and Thermal Stress Analysis of a Corner Welded Joint by Finite Element Method

In Arc welding heat is transferred to the joint by an electrode. During manual metal Arc Welding this heat is transferred by melting the electrode. The stresses generated in welded plate are due to temperature raise and can be simple and thermal stresses. The stresses generated will cause distortion and changing the shape of the welded plates. The study of the distortion and residual stresses is found major importance in the area of shipbuilding boiler works and machine tool structures. The finite element method is one of the numerical techniques used mostly for the stress analysis of welded joints. The present paper deals with the simulation of arc welding process for the study of stresses due to free expansion and temperature rise. ANSYS 11.0, commercial software is used for modeling sand simulation of the present problem. The FE analysis is carried two stages in the first stage thermal stresses analysis has been carried to estimate time dependent temperature. The temperature output of the first stage is given as input in the structural analysis i.e. in the second stage. The structural analysis has been carried of the corner joint with and without fixed boundary conditions along the length of the joint. The output of the combined thermal and structural analysis involves von mises stresses, strains and deformation. The results have been compared with theory and are in good agreement for both free expansion and thermal stress analysis.