Week 3 Verification of Weld Joints

Verification of Welded Joints Challenge Report

Aim: Simulate three different types of welding using three different weld materials

Weld Material used:

Case 1. Stainless Steel: In this case, the material of the plates must also be the same. Use Stainless steel for both weldments and plates. No need to add flux to the weldments.

Case 2. Aluminium Alloy: The material to be chosen for this case is Aluminium alloy (high strength, wrought). [Plate material to be used is stainless steel]

Case 3. Bronze: In order to simulate "Brazing", you should be using bronze as the weld material. Assign Stainless Steel to both plates and Copper to the "Ribs".

Run the simulation for a load of 15000N that is to be applied at the rectangular hole in the small plate (Same as in the video).

For each case, find out the Directional Deformation and equivalent strain experienced by the setup. Identify the weld joint that experiences the highest equivalent stress in each case and compare the results for all three cases

Procedure:

• Select Static Structural, drag and drop into Project Schematic.
• Choose material of welded joints and plates as per requirement in all cases, under Engineering Data.
• Under geometry tab, import the given Welded geometry, double-click to open Space Claim to register the model.
• Then in Mechanical Module, assign a frictional connection between the plates and ribs with coefficient of friction = 0.2, whereas a bonded connection is to be assigned for all welded joints.
• The mesh size was set to default, but the plates were given 7mm mesh sizing.
• Under static structural tab, we assign a fully fixed support to the 5 holes of the big plate.
• A force of 15kN is assigned to the cut-out in the small plate.
• Total Deformation in Y-axis, Equivalent Elastic Strain and Equivalent Stress plots are requested from the solver as outputs.
• We also request the Eq. stress in welded joints to find out which joint undergoes max. stress.
• Run the simulation by clicking on “solve”.

Case 1: Stainless Steel: In this case, the material of the plates must also be the same. Use Stainless steel for both weldments and plates. No need to add flux to the weldments.

Case 2: Aluminium Alloy: The material to be chosen for this case is Aluminium alloy (high strength, wrought). [Plate material to be used is stainless steel]

Case 3: Bronze: In order to simulate "Brazing", you should be using bronze as the weld material. Assign Stainless Steel to both plates and Copper to the "Ribs".

Conclusion:

Case	Plate Material	Weld Material	Eq. Stress (MPa)	Eq. Strain	Directional Deformation (mm)
1	Stainless Steel	Stainless Steel	335.14	0.0017796	0.34159
2	Stainless Steel	Aluminium Alloy	339.78	0.0034032	0.35562
3	Stainless Steel & Copper	Bronze	344.8	0.0032828	0.38704

From the above cases it is evident that Stainless steel plates and weld joints (Case 1) experiences the lowest stress, strain and directional deformation, whereas Stainless Steel and Copper (Case 3) experiences the largest stress, strain and directional deformation.

The joint shown below experiences the maximum stress in all cases: