You are on page 1of 7

2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

 Ansys Innovation Space 

Search... 

FREE STUDENT SOFTWARE LOGIN

General Mechanical

All Channels / General Mechanical / Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving


heat source
July 14, 2021 at 7:02 pm

I am trying to use "Element Birth and Death" technique with a moving heat source in a welding model in workbench.

Basically I divide the weld line in a few parts, and I activate (birth) each part in different time, but I cannot move the
Gab heat source through the parts. (The moving heat source script, without the birth and death technique, is working).
riela
Subscriber

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 1/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

July 19, 2021 at 8:49 pm

Bill
Bula
t
Ansys
Employee

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 2/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

Hello Gabriela In your APDL it appears you are applying heat associated with the welding process as a body load (BFE
command with the HGEN label). One problem might be that if you are inadvertently trying to apply heat to deactivated
elements, the heat will not be used because element loads applied to deactivated elements are zeroed out of the load
vector:

But perhaps, before delving into details, we should clarify your analysis objectives. It isn't clear to me if you are trying
to simulate the addition of filler metal to the parent material (as would happen in arc welding with an electrode), of if
you are instead trying to simulate the melting of parent material without addition of a filler material (I believe this is
the case for laser welding). Also, I don't know if you intend to transfer the thermal results to a structural system (per-
haps to calculate residual stresses within and near the heat effected zone?).
The attached project archive illustrates a simulation of a hypothetical laser weld operation (transient thermal calcula-
tions only). Element birth and death is not used. Heat is applied continuously to element faces along a circular joint
using surface effect elements rather than to the volume of the parent metals. Note that radiation and convection heat
transfer are included in the model. One thing missing in this model is the latent heat of fusion which should be mod-
eled using the enthalpy material property in Engineering Data.
Kind regards Bill

July 19, 2021 at 11:02 pm

Mr Bill thank you for your reply!!!

Indeed, I am applying the heat as body load (BFE). First I deactivated all the elements of the weld line (CMSEL,S,Weld ->
Gab EKILL, all) and then I activate each part before applying the heat, as I have posted before (CMSEL,S,Weld1 ->
riela EALIVE,Weld1 ... BFE...). But could maybe the program not read in that order?
Subscriber
Yes, I am trying to simulate the addition of filler metal to the parent material. And yes, I intend to transfer the thermal
results to a structural system to calculate residual stresses.
Actually, I already did this before WITHOUT implement the "element birth and death technique" - The heat source was
moving and I was able to transfer the results to a structural system.

And I also included radiation and convection in the model, I just suppressed radiation because seems show some er-
ror that I couldn't solve yet when I implement the birth and death technique.
Thank you for tell me about the enthalpy property, I hadn't really added this property before.

Is this information enough for maybe you help me?


Kind regards,
Gabriela

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 3/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

February 17, 2022 at 11:53 am

I am having the same problem. Did you able to solve the APDL issue? let me know

thanks mukesh
mka
lel
Subscriber

February 18, 2022 at 7:54 am

No. I tried a lot, but stayed stuck there.

Gab
riela
Subscriber

March 29, 2022 at 11:58 am

In Ansys workbench, I also found that moviding heat source is unable to consider birth and death elements. Is there
any APDL commands to apply birth and death elements to moving heat source?

Jaye
sh
Subscriber

May 22, 2022 at 3:27 pm

I am using the code below and I experience the same problem as Gabriela
I can have welding done in WELD1, but it is not possible to continue welding in WELD2.
WELD contains both WELD1 and WELD2.
atell
o28 Can anybody give some advice?
Subscriber
CMSEL,S,WELD
EKILL,ALL

!FIRST WELD FIRST SECOND

CMSEL,S,WELD1
EALIVE,WELD1

CMSEL,ALL
*GET,EMAX,ELEM,,NUM,MAX
*GET,EMIN,ELEM,,NUM,MIN
ALLSEL

TIME_WELD=6
DT=0.1
A=0.005
B=0.005
C1=0.005
 C2=0.015
TAU=0
https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 4/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source
FF=0.5
FR=1.5
Q=1500
VEL=5e-3

NPT=TIME_WELD/DT
NROPT, FULL

*DO,i,1,NPT,1
WTIME=(i/10)
TIME,WTIME+0*TIME_WELD

HCENTER=VEL*WTIME

*DO,jj,EMIN,EMAX,1

*GET, X, elem, jj, cent, X


*GET, Y, elem, jj, cent, Y
*GET, Z, elem, jj, cent, Z

CSI=Y+VEL*(TAU-WTIME)

*IF,Y,GT,HCENTER,THEN

C=C1
F=FF

*ELSE

C=C2
F=FR

*ENDIF

PART1=(6*(3**0.5)*F*Q)/(A*B*C*3.14*(3.14**0.5))
PART2=(exp(-3*(Z/A)**2))*(exp(-3*(X/B)**2))*(exp(-3*(CSI/C)**2))

QF=PART1*PART2

BFE,jj,HGEN,,QF

*ENDDO

SOLVE

*ENDDO

CMSEL,ALL
BFEDELE,ALL,ALL
ALLSEL

!SECOND WELD SECOND SECOND

CMSEL,S,WELD2
EALIVE,WELD2

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 5/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source
*DO,i,1,NPT,1
WTIME=(i/10)
TIME,WTIME+1*TIME_WELD

HCENTER=VEL*WTIME

*DO,jj,EMIN,EMAX,1

*GET, X, elem, jj, cent, X


*GET, Y, elem, jj, cent, Y
*GET, Z, elem, jj, cent, Z

CSI=Y+VEL*(TAU-WTIME)

*IF,Y,GT,HCENTER,THEN

C=C1
F=FF

*ELSE

C=C2
F=FR

*ENDIF

PART1=(6*(3**0.5)*F*Q)/(A*B*C*3.14*(3.14**0.5))
PART2=(exp(-3*(Z/A)**2))*(exp(-3*(X/B)**2))*(exp(-3*(CSI/C)**2))

QF=PART1*PART2

BFE,jj,HGEN,,QF

*ENDDO

SOLVE

*ENDDO

CMSEL,ALL
BFEDELE,ALL,ALL
Learning Forum Feed
ALLSEL My Posts

Viewing 6 reply threads

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.

Ansys Innovation Space

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 6/7
2/10/23, 8:47 PM Element Birth and Death technique with a welding moving heat source

Earth Rescue – An Ansys Online Ans


Boost Ansys Fluent Simulations Series Subs
with AWS The climate crisis is here. But so is the human cont
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) helps en- ingenuity to fight it. Earth Rescue reveals what ered
gineers design products in which the flow of visionary companies are doing today to engi- With
fluid components is a significant challenge. neer radical new ideas in the fight against cli- and
These different use cases often require large mate change. Click here to watch the first deve
complex models to solve on a traditional episode. and
workstation. Click here to join this event to Sign
learn how to leverage Ansys Fluids on the
cloud, thanks to Ansys Gateway powered by
 

Trending discussions

Top Contributors

Top Rated Tags

Legal Notices Privacy Notice Cookie Policy Export Complaince Terms & Conditions
Forum Rules & Guidelines Data Subject Rights Policy

© 2023 Copyright ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved.


Ansys does not support the usage of unauthorized Ansys software. Please visit www.ansys.com to obtain an offi-
cial distribution.

https://forum.ansys.com/forums/topic/element-birth-and-death-technique-with-a-welding-moving-heat-source/ 7/7

You might also like