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Optimization of welding joint between tower and bottom ange based on residual
stress considerations in a wind turbine
Wenchun Jiang a, *, Qinshan Fan b, Jianming Gong c
a
College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Dongying 257061, PR China
b
Division of Mechanics, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing 210009, PR China
c
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing 210009, PR China
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: In this study, a geometry optimization of welding joint between tower and bottom ange in a wind
Received 30 March 2009 turbine is performed based on residual stress considerations. A sequentially coupling nite element
Received in revised form analysis (FEA) program is developed to simulate the welding temperature and residual stress. Using this
21 August 2009
FEA program, four FE models with different bevel are developed to calculate their residual stresses,
Accepted 10 October 2009
Available online 4 November 2009
which are compared to optimize the weld geometry. The results show that complex residual stresses are
generated and concentrated in the llet weld. Using K type bevel with internal concave llet and outside
convex llet can obtain the minimal residual stress, which provides a reference the fabrication of wind
Keywords:
Wind turbine turbines.
Weld residual stress 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
FEA
Optimization
0360-5442/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2009.10.012
462 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467
Table 2
Thermal and mechanical properties.
y
C
tower
x
17 13 18
14
bottom flange Fig. 4. The model for verication.
11 7 8 12 16
15
9 5 3 1 2 4 6 10
A B
internal concave llet and outside convex llet. The FE meshing is
shown in Fig. 3. 2-D plane strain model and quadrilateral elements
Fig. 2. Finite element model 1. with four nodes are used. 14 706 nodes and 14,378 elements are
meshed. The element type for temperature and residual stress is
DC2D4 and CPE4, respectively. The same meshing is used in the
temperature and residual stress simulation.
120
Teng's (x)
Fig. 3. FE Meshing. 100 Present method (x)
Teng's (z)
Residual stress (MPa)
80
2.56 m at the top. The shell thickness of the tower ranges from Present method (z)
60
26 mm at the base to 12 mm at the top. The whole tower is
composed of four sections connected by hubbed anges and bolts. 40
The weld of bottom ange and tower is designed as full penetration
of llet weld as shown in Fig. 1. In this paper, the welding residual 20
stress is simulated by ABAQUS software. A 2-D nite element model
named model 1 is presented in Fig. 2. The bevel is K type with 0
-20
Table 1 -40
Chemical composition of Q345D (in wt%). 0 20 40 60 80 100
C Si Mn S P Nb Cu Ni Cr Ti V Distance (mm)
0.13 0.32 1.33 0.029 0.025 0.026 0.009 0.010 0.008 0.003 0.003
Fig. 5. A comparison of Residual stress between Tengs and present method.
W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467 463
UI h
DFLUX (1)
Sv
where U is the voltage (28 V), I is current (180A); h is the arc
efciency (0.7); S is the cross section area of welding pass; v is the
weld speed (36 cm/min).
There are 18 welding passes in total as shown in Fig. 2. The
simulation of weld metal deposition is achieved by the function
of model change (remove and add). Before welding, the weld
metal elements are removed. Once the welding starts, the welded
pass is added and heated, then it is cooled down until the next
weld pass cycle begins. The temperature history of all the nodes
is stored in a le for the subsequent residual stress calculation.
Fig. 6. The temperature contour.
The material properties relevant to thermal analysis are density,
specic heat capacity, latent heat capacity, and solidus/liquidus
temperatures.
The welding temperature simulation is consisted of 36 steps in
temperature dependent thermal and mechanical properties are total, and each two steps represent the application of a weld pass.
shown in Table 2. In this study, the material is assumed isotropic, The application of each pass includes a series of time increments.
linear elastic and plastic. The maximum allowable change in temperature in an increment
has been set at 30 C.
2.3. Welding temperature analysis
2.4. Residual stress analysis
In the thermal analysis, the welding process is primarily simu-
lated by applying a distributed heat ux to the weld elements. The The residual stress is calculated by using the temperature
distributed heat ux, DFLUX, is calculated by distribution obtained from the thermal analysis as input data. The
a 1600
Node 1
Temperature(C)
1200
800
400
0
0 150 300 450 600
Time(s)
b 1600 c 1600
Node 2 Node 3
Temperature (C)
Temperature (C)
1200 1200
800 800
400 400
0
0
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)
d 1600 e 1600
Node 4 Node 5
Temperature(C)
Temperature(C)
1200 1200
800 800
400 400
0 0
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)
Fig. 7. The temperature history (a) Node 1 (b) Node 2 (c) Node 3 (d) Node 4 (e) Node 5.
464 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467
The size of the nite element mesh has a great effect on the
accuracy of the simulation results and computational time. To
examine the adequacy of the element size, the effect of mesh
renement is studied. A new model consisted of 16 725 elements
and 17 050 nodes is developed. It is found that there is very little
difference between the both results. Therefore, the original nite
element model with 14 378 elements and 14 706 nodes can be used
to calculate the temperature eld and residual stress.
100
in the axial direction of tower.
Fig. 8 presents the radial and axial stress distribution contour. It
0 can be seen that the stresses in the weld joint are complex and non-
uniform. The peak radial and axial stresses are 330 and 287 MPa,
which are located in lower and top toe as shown in Fig. 8,
-100 respectively.
Fig. 9 shows the residual stress distribution along path P shown
in Fig. 3. The axial stress shows tensile stress in the supercial layer
-200
of 6 mm thickness, and then it gradually turns to compressive in
the middle zone. The maximum tensile axial stress is on the weld
-300 surface, while the peak compressive axial stress is located at the
0 8 16 24 32 40 root. The radial stress along path P is tensile and shows a charac-
Distance (mm) teristic of wavy shape.
Fig. 10 presents the residual stresses variation with time for
Fig. 9. The residual stress distribution along path P. node 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. It is shown that the development
W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467 465
a 400
S11
300
S22
200
Stress(MPa)
100
0
-100
-200
-300
0 150 300 450 600
Time(s)
b 400 c 400
S11 S11
300 S22 300 S22
200 200
Stress(MPa)
Stress(MPa)
100 100
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
-300 -300
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)
d 400 e 400
S11 S11
300 300
S22 S22
200 200
Stress(MPa)
Stress(MPa)
100 100
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
-300 -300
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)
Fig. 10. Residual stress history (a) Node 1 (b) Node 2 (c) Node 3 (d) Node 4 (e) Node 5.
y cos 45
3.3. Optimization of the weld geometry q tg1 (2)
x y cos 45
This section discusses the effect of weld geometry on the
residual stress, aiming to decrease the weld residual stress and
optimize the bevel geometry. Another three models with different
bevel shape are developed, which are shown in Fig. 11. Model 2 is
single-V bevel; model 3 is K bevel with double concave llet weld;
model 4 is K bevel with double convex llet weld.
Fig. 12 shows the radial stress contour of the three models. The
peak values are 356, 372, and 369 MPa, respectively. Fig. 13 gives
their axial stress contour, and the peak values are 376, 332, and
388 MPa, respectively. As shown in Fig. 8, the peak stresses of
model 1 are only 287 and 330 MPa, which are smaller than that of
the rest three models. It is shown that using model 1 with internal
concave llet and outside convex llet can get a smaller residual
a b c
stress distribution, which is helpful for increasing strength and Fig. 11. Three FE models with different bevel shape: (a) model 2; (b) model 3; (c)
promote the service life. model 4.
466 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467
Fig. 12. The radial stress contour: (a) model 2, (b) model 3, (c) model 4.
Fig. 13. The axial stress contour: (a) model 2, (b) model 3, (c) model 4.
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