Study of welding inherent deformations in thin plates based on finite element analysis using interactive substructure method

The paper investigates the inherent deformations of thin plate bead-on-plate welding with varying plate thicknesses for eight different materials. Firstly, three-dimensional (3D) thermal elastic–plastic finite element (FE) model based on interactive substructure method (ISM) is used to compute welding deformations within practical time. Computed results are compared with experimental results. Very good correlation is obtained for temperature as well as deformation predictions between experimental and ISM. The effectiveness of ISM is validated. Then, welding inherent deformations are evaluated by inverse analysis using the computational results of ISM. Using inherent deformations, weld deformation can be estimated within shorter time by elastic-shell model. Finally, a database of inherent deformations for eight different materials including 144 computational cases is developed. In addition, the relationship between welding heat input parameter and inherent deformations is discussed.