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Numerical prediction of welding distortion in submerged arc welded butt and

fillet joints

Conference Paper · December 2016

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 Numerical prediction of welding distortion in
submerged arc welded butt and fillet joints.
Saurav Suman (Author)
Department of mechanical Engineering
National Institute of Technology Mizoram
Aizawl, India
sauravnitmz@gmail.com
Abstract— In arc welding processes, due to the uneven heating and
cooling complex thermal stresses and strains are induced in the weld,
leading to residual stress and distortion in the arc welded joint. These
distortions affect the final product especially while assembling a
large structure. So, the distortion patterns and their magnitude must
be known to overcome this at the design stage before the actual
welding occurs. The distortions and thermal history of a joint can be
measured experimentally, but the measurement procedure may be
costly and time consuming. In the present work a three-dimensional
thermo-elasto-plastic finite element analysis was used to model the
arc welding process and to predict the welding induced distortion in
butt and fillet weld joints. A Gaussian distributed moving heat source
model was employed to study the temperature profile in submerged
arc welding. Structural analysis based on the resultant temperature
distribution was carried out to analyse the angular deformation and
buckling distortions in both the weld joints. The experimental
distortion results were compared to theoretical one for butt joint.
Finally, single and double sided fillet weld joints were analysed
theoretically.
Keywords—Arc welding; Distortion; Finite Element Analysis
I. INTRODUCTION
Welding as a high productive forming method is widely used
in automotive, aerospace and shipbuilding industries. In
practice, welding distortion brings about undesirable effects
on production accuracy, appearance and strength of welded
components, which creates the need of rework such as cutting,
alignments and straightening by means of reverse design and
distortion margin. Thus, in order to increase the productivity
and decrease the overall cost, prediction and analysis of
welding induced distortion have become so crucial that lots of
researchers have been working on it, prominent among them
are Friedman [1], Brown and Song [2], Michaleris and
Debiccari [3], Bonifaz [4], Fanouset et al. [5], and Tekriwal
and Mazumdar [6]. Referring to Deng and Murakawa [7]
angular deformation affects the structural integrity,
dimensional inaccuracy as well as the quality & performance
of the final part, thus leads to an unstable structure which
signifies the importance of distortion analysis of these basic
weld joints. The finite element method has been successfully
used to insight the temperature distribution and welding
distortion for last four decades. Two-dimensional models were
978-1-5090-2976-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Pankaj Biswas (Author), P.V.S.S. Sridhar (Author)
Department of mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Guwahati, India
p.biswas@iitg.ernet.in
used by Ueda and Yamakawa [8] to predict residual stresses.
Lindgren and karlson [9] were the first to introduce 3D weld
model for distortion and stress analysis. Despite the
inaccuracy introduced by some assumptions, two-dimensional
(2D) models were still being used because of the less
computational time. But 3D model is preferable over 2D
because it accounts for all the components of stress and strain
and so resulting a complete analysis. In the present work, a 3D
model has been developed and analysed by using the ANSYS
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software which includes three
steps i.e., the modelling of butt and fillet weld joints using
proper element types with required degree of freedom, then
thermal analysis to determine the nodal temperature obtained
from the welding process followed by cooling and finally the
nodal temperatures are applied as body load to get the
structural responses as residual stresses and strains resulting
angular distortion and shrinkage of the weld joints.
II. FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING
A. Heat Source model
The heat source model in an arc welding has an important
effect on the heat distribution pattern in the vicinity of the
weld zone where fusion zone and Heat Affected Zone (HAZ)
are formed. As the plate thickness number for SAW is 0.88.
The heat flow can be considered as two dimensional or surface
heat flux load [10]. For the submerged arc welding process,
the distribution of the heat source may be characterized as a
Gaussian distributed heat flux on the weldment surface.
Assuming that the heat from the welding arc is applied at any
given instant of time as gaussian distributed heat flux, then the
rate of heat generation can be given as in equation (1):
3Q   r 2 
qsup (r ) = exp -3  2   (1)
∏ R2   R 
Where Q is the heat input from arc given by the product of
welding Source voltage (V), current (I) and arc efficiency(ƞ), r
= distance from the center of the heat source and R = effective
arc radius that defines the region in which 95% of heat flux is
deposited[11] [12].
 Proceeding of International Conference on Design and Manufacturing, 2016.
B. Boundary Conditions and Assumptions
Table 2.1 Dimensions of welded joints.
As in the submerged arc welding process the whole part
except the welding zone of the weld structure remains in the Weld Joints Dimensions (mm)
Butt joint 150×75×8
solid state so a 3D conduction model was considered to
Fillet joint 200×200×6 (Base plate), 200×50×6 (Web)
analyse the thermal distribution. Hence, in the schematic of
both the weld joint models as shown in Fig.2.1 the area
Here the experiment for SAW butt joint was performed on
indicated as S1 or the throat top surface area, in case of fillet
AISI 304 steel plate while fillet model were theoretically
joint model, a conduction heat flux load were applied from a
analyzed for Mild steel plate. Temperature dependent material
moving heat source model and convection load were applied
properties for both the metal are plotted as shown in Fig.2.2
on rest of the areas indicated as S2 to incorporate the heat loss
and Fig.2.3. The welding parameters for both the SAW joint
at the same time. Ambient temperature (T∞) was taken as
models are also enlisted in Table.2.2.
initial condition or initial temperature and the other two
boundary conditions were taken as in equations (2) and (3): Table 2.2 Welding parameters for butt and fillet joints
1. Conduction over surface area S1 Welding Parameters for both butt and fillet
weld joints
∂T
Qn = −Qsup. Or, −k = −Qn (2) Welded
∂n Current Voltage Welding Efficiency
Joints (A) (V) Speed
(m/sec)
2. Convection loss over surface area S2 Butt 450 27 0.005 0.85
joint
Qn = −Qconvec. Or, Qn = h f (T − T∞ ) (3) Fillet 430 22 0.005 0.85
joint

Where Qn = Component of conduction heat flux normal to

the work face, Qsup. = Heat flux applied on the work face,
Qconvec. = Heat loss due to convection and T = Welding plate
surface temperature. For structural analysis the boundary
conditions were applied as constraints to prevent the rigid
body motion of the weld plate as shown in the same schematic
of the weld models in Fig.2.1.The plastic deformation was
assumed as rate independent and modelled with the Von Mises
yield criterion, temperature dependent material properties and
Bilinear kinematic hardening behavior along with associated
flow rule [13]. The density of the work material was assumed
to be constant throughout the welding process. Dimension of
the plates in butt and fillet weld joints are tabulated below in
Table 2.1.
C. Material Properties and Welding Parameters
As the welding process includes highly unstable local heating
followed by rapid cooling process the metal has both physical
and mechanical properties varying with temperature. , The distorted angle (a) was measured from equation (4)-
Fig. 2.1 Boundary conditions in butt and fillet weld joints.
III. EXPERIMENT DETAILS FOR SAW BUTT JOINT
In the present investigation a constant current submerged arc
welding (SAW) set up, copper coated stainless steel electrode
of 3.1 mm diameter and granular flux have been used for
carrying out square butt welding on AISI 304 steel sample.
The whole calibrated SAW setup with butt joint sample is
shown in Fig 3.1. The welding distortion in a simple butt joint
was measured with coordinate measuring machine (CMM)
(Make: Carl Zeiss, USA) as shown in Fig 3.2. The work piece
under observation was placed on a V Block and was
positioned on the horizontal bed of the machine. With the help
of tri-square straight lines were scribed on the top face of the
specimen. The control points for measurement were marked
with the help of centre punch. The coordinate measurement
machine is interfaced with U- Soft software. The included
angle between the two collinear lines was measured. Two
reading were taken transversely, one at the top edge and other
at the centre of the welded and pre-welded sample.
b1 - b2
a= (4)
2
Where a = Distortion angle, b1 = Included angle for pre
welded plate, b2 = Included angle for welded plate.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Verification of numerical and experimental thermal profile
in SAW butt joint
The K type thermocouple with temperature range of -200◦C to
1350◦C were used to estimate the time varying temperature
values at a point 30 mm away from the center of the weld line
 Proceeding of International Conference on Design and Manufacturing, 2016.

Fig.2.3 Temperature dependent Material properties of AISI 304 steel

Fig.2.2 Temperature dependent Material properties of Mild steel

on the top surface of the weld plate in transverse direction.

And the same thermal profile were plotted from numerical
thermal analysis of the same square butt joint model for the
same welding parameters. Fig 4.1 shows the comparison
between thermal profile obtained from the experiment and the
theoretical analysis. It can be observed that the theoretically
obtained thermal profile is fairly matching with the
experimental one Which shows the effectiveness of this
theoretical FE analysis method to simulate the actual welding
process.
B. Verification of numerical and experimental distortion
results for SAW butt joint
Fig.3.2 Experimental set up of Coordinate measuring machine (CMM)
The Fig. 4.2 represents the distortion pattern of the SAW butt
joint analyzed theoretically along with the curve comparing Vertical deformation at the edge it can be observed that the
the distortion results obtained from experiment performed distortion pattern are pretty comparable with a considerable
with the theoretically predicted one by the structural FE difference in the value of deformation at the middle section.
analysis at the edge of the plate. From the plotted curve for the The angular deformation in terms of distortion angle (a) as
mentioned in the earlier section was also calculated as 0.183◦
by using CMM and the same was determined theoretically as
0.179◦ which is very much comparable to the experimental
one.

C. Distortion results for fillet joint from numerical analysis

Once this theoretical FE analysis method applied for SAW

square butt joint has been approved as an effective method to
theoretically predict the welding induced distortion for SAW
joints. The same analysis can be performed for single sided
and double sided single pass fillet weld joints which
dimensions, model and welding parameters were explained in
the earlier sections. Fig 4.3 shows the overall distortion pattern
of the single and double sided fillet weld joints along with the
plot of the vertical distortion values of the points along the
transverse direction of the center of the weld line. It can easily
be observed that the distortion values on the welded side of the
base plate of the single sided weld joints are higher than the
Fig.3.1 Experimental set up of SAW process for square butt joint
 Proceeding of International Conference on Design and Manufacturing, 2016.
distortion values on the other side plate without welding,
whereas for double sided fillet weld joint the distortion values
Fig.4.1 Comparison of change in temperature w.r to time at a point for
experimental and theoretical analysis
are almost same on both the sides of the base plate. Even the
values of vertical deformation for double sided fillet joints are
more than the single sided fillet joints.
V. CONCLUSION
1. An experiment for submerged arc welded square butt
joint on AISI 304 steel plate had been successfully
performed for welding induced distortion analysis.
2. Thermo-mechanical finite element analysis had also
been performed for the same butt joint model.
3. The thermal and structural results in the form of
thermal profile and distortion pattern were fairly
matching for both the distortion prediction methods.
4. As a result of that the same theoretical thermo-
mechanical analysis was performed for prediction of
distortion pattern in SAW single side and double side
fillet joints of mild steel plate.
5. And so, this theoretically analyzed distortion pattern
can directly be utilized at the design stage for further
Mitigation process before performing the actual
welding process.
Fig4.2 Comparison of vertical deformation results obtained from experiment
and theoretical analysis at the points along the edge
VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are thankful to the Department of Mechanical engineering,
IIT Guwahati for providing the excellent facilities to perform
the related experiments. We are also thankful to the
Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT Mizoram for
availing the Academic package of ANSYS 16 software.
.
Fig.4.3 Angular deformation pattern for single sided and double sided fillet
joints (Left to right) and Comparison of the pattern through plotted curve of
the deformation results at points on the top surface along the transverse
direction
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