Welding Case Study

Automotive OEM and selected suppliers, railway and aerospace industry.

Thick/thin-walled chassis and body structures.

• Usually, parts are assembled by welding process. Car chassis components have 5 to 100 welding joints. The trend is always to reduce the number of welding joints.
• Reduction of fuel consumption leads to usage of lightweight material. Strength, plasticity, corrosion-resistance and weldability leads to aluminum material.
• Aluminum needs a big power input to be welded properly, on the other hand, the distortions are higher than steel. The goal of simulation is to predict and minimize the distortions by optimization of all components of the welding assembly process.
• If the concern is high security for in service behavior, the interest is also the loss of mechanical properties and the residual stresses which give input for further fatigue and structure computations.

Motorcycle body frame

Bicycle body frame

Thin wall frame

• The objective of such simulations is generally to minimize distortion. The evaluation of the best clamping tool position is one task, next to process parameter optimization.
• Minimize in service failure: Fatigue life and crack risk prediction must take into account residual stresses and stress gradients due to welding. By optimizing all components of a welding repair process, risk factors could be reduced.

Heavy industry

Ship building and building of construction machines.

Welding Assembly of parts by multi-pass or single pass welding

• The objective of simulations is generally to minimize distortion. Distortion repair takes 20% to 40% of the total manufacturing cost.
• In the industrial sectors, welded parts are often quite large and expensive. Prototyping and destructive measurement tests are often not acceptable. The numerical simulation is a powerful tool to reduce cost.
• Control residual stresses to minimize in service failure. Fatigue life and crack risk prediction must take into account residual stresses and stress gradients due to welding. By optimizing all components of a welding process, risk factors could be reduced.

Ship building and building of construction machines.

Welding Assembly of parts by multi-pass or single pass welding.

• The objective of simulations is generally to minimize distortion. Distortion repair takes 20% to 40% of the total manufacturing cost.
• In the industrial sectors, welded parts are often quite large and expensive. Prototyping and destructive measurement tests are often not acceptable. The numerical simulation is a powerful tool to reduce cost.
• Control residual stresses to minimize in service failure. Fatigue life and crack risk prediction must take into account residual stresses and stress gradients due to welding. By optimizing all components of a welding process, risk factors could be reduced.