| Abstract Scope |
The establishment of new welding processes and materials typically requires significant R&D effort to produce sound welds and/or qualify the weld, which can be expensive and inflexible to new materials or part geometries. The creation of residual stresses, or part distortion, depends on a number of parameters, and extensive experimental effort is typically undertaken in order to avoid unfavorable conditions or to meet final part tolerances or requirements. Distortion modeling has been ongoing at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to develop a capability to reduce this time, expense, and effort while assessing distortion and residual stress in welds. Using computational modeling tools, specifically in the area of finite element modeling (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the goal of this work is to provide flexibility when it comes to developing welds and weld processes, with a focus on adopting improved weld processes to an array of materials and reducing the challenges associated with residual stress and distortion. This talk will build on previously presented work on the development of computational techniques and tools for distortion modeling, with a focus on computational tool suitability for different manufacturing timescales, as well as a demonstration of modeling with respect to arc and electron beam welding. While a majority of the work has focused on the use of Abaqus FEM, this talk will also highlight efforts using Solidworks, Flow3D (CFD), and other modeling software used at LANL. Although these tools are being incrementally integrated into the R&D process, continued adoption is expected to greatly decrease the iterations required for weld development. This talk will also provide context for future applications, such as additive manufacturing, and highlight other relevant LANL efforts related to process modeling. |