What‘s new

What‘s new
Simufact.welding 6

1
Simufact.welding 6.0

Highlights and milestones of the 6.0 release:

 New process types

 Extended solution possibilities for large structures
 Improvements in resistance spot welding
 Improved and extended pre- and postprocessing
 Additional material models
 Stabilization and speed-up of the solution procedure
 Extended particle tracking
 Time-history plots
 Additional hardening models
 More flexible heat source definition
 Improved multilayer welding

2
Process types
Process types

4
Process type ”brazing“

 Main difference to usual welding model is the representation of the heat

source.

 Without further model changes it is possible to apply the heat source to filler
elements only.

 The heat flux is adjusted according to the defined heat source.

 For the thermal cycle approach, the nodes where the heat is applied can
also be limited to fillers only.

5
Process type ”electron beam welding“

 Changing boundary conditions (opening of the vacuum chamber) are

respected in terms of changing convective heat transfer.

 Welding takes place in a vacuum chamber without convective losses.

 An opening time has to be defined.

 The convection changes according to a given value.

6
Process type ”stress relief heat treatment“

 Stress relaxation due to decreasing yield stress

 Temperature-time data has to be defined for surroundings (oven)

 Definition of the time and temperature-time behavior during heating, holding

time as well as free cooling time

7
Solution approaches for large structures
Idea

 Real-life welding processes are often applied to large assemblies

with several meters of weld paths or hundreds of spot welds.
 Calculation time needed for transient simulations is very high.
 Often it is sufficient to have fast approximations of the solution to
investigate trends, i.e. the direction of distortions.
 Two main ideas were considered for implementation of such
approximate solutions:
 Some coupling effects can be neglected.
 Sequences and/or time history can be neglected, too.

 As far as possible, no new model setup necessary, fast solution

approaches should be manageable with a single checkbox.

9
”Single shot“ solution RSW
 The single shot solution for resistance spot welding applies all spots at
once.
 The physically correct electrical-thermal-metallurgical-mechanical coupling
is respected.
 No new model setup needed.
 Process times (pauses, velocities, unclamping) are adapted automatically.

10
Mechanical solution RSW

 The mechanical solution for resistance spot welding eliminates all coupling
effects.
 Only the mechanical solution is calculated.
 The force of the electrodes establishes the contact between surfaces,
meshes in the contact area are refined and glued.
 The stiffness of joints can be estimated for further processing.

11
”Single shot“ solution for thermal joining

 The single shot solution for thermal joining applies all heat sources to all
weld lines at once.
 Transient heat sources are replaced by thermal cycle.
 The time schedule is adjusted so that all heat sources are applied for the
same time period.
 Heating and cooling are both calculated.
 The calculation time decreases significantly.
 New model setup is not necessary.

12
”Shrinkage“ approach for thermal joining

 The “shrinkage” solution for thermal joining calculates the effect of

shrinkage of weldments on the complete structure (effects of upsetting are
thus not visible).

 All weld lines are experiencing the thermal load at once.

 Material data is adjusted automatically:

 The material model is formulated without any temperature dependencies.
 Thermal expansion is adjusted to make shrinkage visible.

 Thermal loads are applied until the end of the process.

 This results in a steady-state situation which shows deformation tendencies.

 The calculation can be done very fast (<20 increments for large models).

13
Mesh and heat source
Weld seam

Typical edge length: 1 mm

Heat source
Current: 180 A
Voltage.: 18 V

3 mm
~ 470 000 volume elements
Efficiency: 0,8
~ 409 000 surface elements
16 weld lines Velocity: 0,6 m/min
6 m overall weld length Energy input: 2592 J/cm

A transient simulation without decoupling and optimization would take

about 9 weeks (100 hours per line)!

14
Results
Thermal cycle
Total distortion
mm y - distortion
z x - distortion mm

x
y

Total distortion
mm
x - distortion mm y - distortion
z

y
x

~60 h

15
Results

Single shot Shrinkage

mm
Total distortion
x - distortion x - distortion
mm mm z mm
z

x x
y y
mm
y - distortion y - distortion

Total distortion mm
x - distortion
mm x - distortion
z mm
z mm

y y
x x
mm
y - distortion
y - distortion

~6,1 h ~3,0 h

16
Scalability
Speed
Fully Transient Thermal Single shot Shrinkage
transient decoupled cycle

Time 1600 h 266 h 60 h 6,1 h 3h

Speedup 1 6x 27 x 262 x 533 x

Precision

local joint

clamping tools bearings clamping tools

17
 Improvements
Resistance spot welding
Model setup

 Reference point and local coordinate system of electrodes are visible in the
preview.

 Lower electrode can be modeled with stiffness.

19
Model setup

 Third point of orientation can be defined:

 Orientation of electrodes can also be calculated automatically.

20
Model setup and postprocessing

 Initial position of electrodes is adjusted if they have intersections with other

geometries.
 A material has to be applied to electrodes in order to calculate their heat
transfer coefficient and electrical contact resistivity. A standard material
(copper) can also be applied.

 Electrical contact conductivity can now be calculated also for segment-to-

segment contact.
 Points of a point sequence can have labels applied to them that are visible
in the 3D view.
 The point sequence is visible in the result view.
 The process report respects specifics of RSW processes.

21
User interface
User interface

 Added Japanese translation to Welding GUI

 Screenshots are now done with default format PNG. The last used format is
saved for future use.
 Mouse interactions are now the same for Forming and Welding (translation,
rotation, measurements,…).
 View synchronization now respects times, planes, results and color maps.

23
User interface

 The clipping plane can be defined out of the view plane.

24
User interface

 Objects in the catalog can be sorted:

 It is possible to define 999 objects of one type out of the process settings:

 Also 999 elements per edge during meshing of rigid bodies are possible.
 The catalog now allows multiselection of objects.

25
Geometry and mesh handling
Tools

 Tools can be imported directly from CAD data:

27
Tools

 The surface of imported tools can be meshed:

28
Meshes

 Several meshes (surface, shell and volume meshes) can be imported at

once, settings for surface meshes are applied to all of them.

 The fillet generator notices and warns if unusable fillet meshes are
generated.
 All refinement levels are applied at once.
 It is possible to refine all weld seams before the simulation starts.

29
Materials
Materials and material database

 Addition of following material data:

 Ferritic steel X2CrTiNb18
 Aluminum alloy TL-100 with effects of aging and precipitation
 Some materials to be used in a brazing process as fillet material
 Stellite 21 is usable as welding material.
 It is possible to define a hardening model (isotropic, kinematic, mixed) for
each component separately.

 Multiphase steels can be imported from JMatPro with electrical properties

with respect to phases.

31
Preprocessing
Time control

 Improved the time step calculation for “fixed (automatic)” time stepping
scheme with respect to heat source geometry.
 Instead of unclear definition of times for result output, now a frequency can
be defined.
 Minimum, maximum and initial time step length for each loadcase can be
defined in the expert mode.

33
Domain decomposition

 Additional possibilities for automatic domain decomposition:

 Recursive coordinate bisection is suggested

 Island detection can be activated:

34
Heat source definition

 For all heat sources a Gaussian concentration factor can be defined:

 The concentration factor

describes the distribution of
the heat flux density within the
heat source.
 Old input files are still usable.

35
Heat source definition

 Conical heat source can be used for laser and electron beam heat sources:

 Old input files are still usable.

36
Heat source definition

 Heat source position can be made visible.

 Pre und postprocessing
 This allows an a-priori control of the heat source movement.

37
Heat source definition

 Heat sources can be connected to nodes under the sampling points. Thus,
the weld path is not missed even for large deformations.

 If there are no nodes under the sampling points, a projection to the nearest
node can be applied.

38
Heat source definition

 Heat source general information contains:

 several equipment manufacturers and types,
 welding position.

 Data exchange format is not changed compared to previous versions.

39
Heat source definition

 The heat source database allows saving, filtering and loading of heat source
data according to parameters of the process.

 Several heat sources can be imported at once.

 Heat source and electrode positions can be shown in the 3D model and
result view.

40
Thermal boundary conditions
 The convection coefficient can be defined via time table:

 Heat conduction between geometries can be defined as a table as a function of

temperature or can be calculated automatically out of material data. For tools a
tool steel grade H13 is used, alternatively it
is possible to apply material data to tools.

41
Positioning

 Geometries can be combined to assemblies.

 Assemblies can be positioned (translated or rotated with respect to common
rotation axis) at once.

 A rotation axis can be defined including the rotation center:

42
Model check

 The model check has been extended. The model is checked in the GUI for
inconsistencies, possible problems are shown in the process tree with red
or orange colors. Additionally the consistency is checked before input file
generation.

 There are two kinds of messages:

 Warning: Data might be incomplete or not suitable, but it is possible to start a simulation.
 Error: The simulation cannot be started.
 Often advice is shown how to solve these issues.

43
Model check – additional checks

 New checks were added to already existing checks:

 Check if liquidus and solidus temperature are set.
 Check if chemical composition is within reasonable limits.
 Check if electrical material data is present in a resistance spot welding model.
 For multiphase materials, check if initial phase composition is defined.
 Check if material definition is compatible with a welding process.
 Removed
 Warning about usage of automatic calculation of electrical contact conductivity using
segment-to-segment contact.

44
DAT file, expert mode, solver
precision, stability and speed
Solver

 Some improvements that stabilize and speed up the contact calculation and
contact separation
 For multilayer welding the heat convection is no more blocked by inactive
layers, also no heat conduction into inactive layers.
 Penetration handling is improved, which leads to better convergence and
higher stability.
 Improved convergence control for resistance spot welding leads to more
stable calculation.
 Support of prestate with refinement
 Chemical composition of multiphase materials is represented in the results.
 More realistic representation of glue contact during resistance spot welding
leads to better results.
 Distorted meshes can be relaxed using augmented Lagrange Eulerian
(ALE) approach.
 Tetrahedral elements 157 are usable and lead to more realistic results.

46
Expert mode and DAT file

 Expert mode
 Improved possibilities to control the time steps in adaptive time stepping scheme
 Glue contact formulation can be adjusted
 Extended control for fixed (automatic) time stepping scheme
 Control of solver behavior in case of penetrations

 DAT file
 The definition of local joints has been cleaned up, which leads to faster reading of the input
file and slightly reduces the memory consumption.
 The DAT file can be edited before starting the calculation, the changes are considered during
the following calculation start.

47
Postprocessing
Time-history plots (THS)

 Movement of geometries as well as resulting forces can be evaluated.

 The data is gathered for all bodies, it is possible to pre-select a set of
bodies as default set.
 The default set is shown in postprocessing, all other bodies can be turned
on additionally.

49
Time-history plots (THS)

 Shown data can be exported.

 It is possible to compare already existing and new data:

50
Particle tracking

 Replaces tracking points

 Particles can be defined before (pre-particles) and after (post-particles) the
simulation, from coordinates or node sets.
 Tracking points are converted if an older project is opened.

 It is possible to define several groups of particles. Those groups can be

evaluated separately.

51
UNV export

 It is possible to select several components, time steps and result values at

once.

52
UNV export

 Selected export settings can be exported and re-used.

 Exported settings can be applied using a batch call.

53
Color legend

 The scaling of the ranges of the legend can be done with respect to visible
components only:

54
Min/max representation

 Positions of minimum and maximum values of a result variable can be

shown for each time step:

55
Welding monitor

 For austenitic steels also isothermal lines for AC1 and AC3 temperatures
are shown:

 The default color legend representation can be defined by the user:

56