International Journal of Engineering and Technology

In the present paper, 3 Dimensional welding simulation was carried out in the FE software ANSYS in order to predict temperature, stress, strain and deformation in the joining of similar and dissimilar materials. The numerical simulation shows that temperature exceeds well above the melting temperature of the substrate material in the welding region. It is found that, higher residual stress is distributed in the weld bead area and surrounding heat affected zone. The stress and strain distribution patterns in the specimen showed that both tended to concentrate at or near points of application of thermal load, and were generally not uniform in these areas. It is also found that Stress and strain were concentrated at corners, edges, and other areas of abrupt change in the shape of the specimen and was also not uniform where the cross-section of the structure changed suddenly, and had large gradients at localized points. The deformation was found maximum at the beginning and the end of welding direction (Y-axis) and minimum at the ends of X-axis as they are simply supported in both ends. In addition, among the six different cases of similar and dissimilar materials (S40C+S40C, STS304+STS304, STS316L+STS316L, S40C+STS304, S40C+STS316L, STS304+STS316L), the minimum temperature was found in S40C+STS304 whereas the maximum temperature was S40C+STS316L; the minimum stress was found in case of S40C+STS304 and maximum stress was found in S40C+STS316L; the minimum strain was found in case of S40C+STS304 and maximum strain was found in STS304+STS304; the minimum deformation was found in S40C+S40C and maximum in S40C+STS316L.The prediction show qualitative good agreement with the experimental results found in the literature and hence it was confirmed that the method of finite elements has proved to be successful for proper design analysis.