FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION DURING ARC-WELDING USING ADAPTIVE-GRID TECHNIQUE

Analysis of temperature and the cooling rates during the welding proce ss is essential to determine the deformation and residual stresses, an d hence, the load-carrying capacity of the weldments. Numerical method s with nonlinear temperature-dependent mechanical properties with late nt heat effects have been developed in recent years. The accuracy and computational efficiency of these methods depend on the input mesh use d in the analysis. In this paper, a transient adaptive mesh, which giv es a fine mesh around the are source where temperature gradients are t oo high and a coarse mesh in other places, is developed. The computed values of temperature for a sample problem are compared with the exper imental results available in the literature. The mesh and temperature plots at different times are presented.