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Automated Spot Weld Modeling

CDH/SPOT

Prepared by Mladen K. Chargin CDH GmbH Consultant

1. INTRODUCTION One of the more tedious and time consuming activities in the analysis of automotive structures is the proper modeling of spot welds. In most cases this activity has not been successfully automated by any existing preprocessors and the task remains essentially a manual activity. Clearly, that is a time consuming as well as a potentially error prone activity. In addition, it is not very easy to find or diagnose the errors which may be introduced by this manual activity. The method of modeling spot welds has also been shown to be important in the accuracy of the frequency response analysis in the mid frequency range which is becoming a prime area of interest for many automotive manufacturers. Numerous manual techniques have been developed, each with a varying degree of success. CDH has developed a fully automated method of generating a reasonably correct approach for modeling the spot welds. It requires only a minimal amount of user interactions, i.e., defining some key parameters as well as providing a file containing the X, Y, and Z positions of the spot welds. This approach has been tested on several practical models and the results correlated well with the experimental data (See Appendix A). There is really no valid or proven theoretical solution to the spot weld problem so the experimental comparison is the only comparison that can be made.

2. TECHNICAL APPROACH The fundamental objective of is to develop a FE model of the spot welds such that the response is as close a possible to the response of the actual vehicle. The secondary objective, and perhaps just as important, is to automate the process as much as possible. The third, and extremely important, objective is to make the spot weld modeling process independent of the structure FE mesh. The third objective is quite significant because the analyst may want to change the position and the number of spot welds without having to change the FE mesh of the structure.

Before discussing any SPOT program details, some assumptions must be stated. The flanges of the various joined components can be modeled either as coincident flanges, or as two flanges separated by a distance approximately equal to (t1+t2)/2, or any other distance. At most only three flanges will be joined, with typical application being only two flanges. (There is a special provision for handling four flange connections) The center of gravity of the spot weld (a point in space) will be projected onto a surface of some element of each flange and this element can be a quadrilateral or a triangular element. The user is required to provide the following data to the SPOT program. - A small control file shown in the following sample input
bulk.bdf $ name of the MSC/NASTRAN bulk data file weld.grids $ spot weld data file name job.out $ output messages file name job.grid_elem.1 $ file name containing the spot weld elements job.mpc.1 $ file name containing the rbe3 data for spot welds $ Tol1 Tol2 Dia Gid Eid DOF Type 4.5, 15., 7.0, 1400001, 1500001, 3, hexa

where
Tol1 = Maximum normal distance from the spot weld C.G. to any joined flange Tol2 = All elements whose C.G. is with this distance from the C.G. of the spot weld are considered as potential candidates to be joined by the spot weld element Dia = Default diameter for the spot welds Gid = First Grid Id for the spot weld modeling Eid = First Elem Id for the spot weld modeling DOF = Degrees of freedom to be used on RBE3 3 or 6, typically 3 Type = Type of spot weld element, MPC or HEXA (always use HEXA)

- and a file containing the C.G. of each proposed spot weld.


$GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID GRID ID Dia 90282 90280 90279 5.0 90276 90274 90272 4.0 90271 90270 90269 X 4563.25 4150.69 4103.25 4242.49 4214.48 5368.58 5325.04 5298.60 5252.69 Y 731.10 876.54 863.86 732.44 735.85 664.39 667.98 668.99 666.83 Z 1026.87 719.02 679.45 1010.87 971.15 1042.70 1065.57 1070.46 1067.73 PID1 5212 5222 5212 5242 PID2 5222 5252 5242 5212 PID3

5432

This file contains data that look like a typical MSC/NASTRAN grid card. However, there are few important differences. The third field contains the diameter of a particular spot weld. If no value is specified, the default is taken from the control file above. Similarly, the fields 7, 8, and 9 contain the PIDs of the flanges that are to be joined by the particular spot weld. These data need not be input. However, there are circumstances in which it must be defined. For example, when three flanges are within the normal tolerance, TOL1, but only two are to be joined. In that case the only way to decide which two flanges are to be joined is by the use of the PIDs. In general, it is a good idea to always provide the PIDs of the connected flanges because the results are more reliable. The approach used is best illustrated by observing Figs. 1 and 2.

Figure 1 Spot weld element In Fig. 1 one can see an 8-node CHEXA element which represents a spot weld that joins two flanges. Clearly the two flanges are separated by some distance, i.e., (t1+t2)/2. However, the meshes for the spot weld and the flanges are different. So the remaining challenge is to correctly connect the grids of the CHEXA to the shell (CQUAD4) elements of the flanges.
4

960

965

970

9 246 8 245 7 244

10002 10001 10003 11 10008 10004 248 10007 10005 10006 10 247 2224 13 250 2229

12 249

15 252 14 251

2234

Figure 2 RBE3 elements representing interpolation functions As can be seen in Fig. 2 there are eight grids for the CHEXA element, 10001 through 10008. Each one of these grids points falls (or is contained within) on a surface of a CQUAD4 element. A very simple concept is used to connect each one of these points to the corner points of the CQUAD4 element. This is accomplished by using the displacement interpolation functions of the element. For the CQUAD4 element (as well as CTRIA3) each displacement component (including rotation DOFs) is represented by a bi-linear shape function. So the problem is to determine the contribution of each corner point of the CQUAD4 to the displacement of a point on the interior of the element. Of course, this is achieved by the appropriate algebraic manipulation of the shape functions. At the end of this process one obtains the following equations for the grid point 10002. The four corner grid points of the CQUAD4 element containing 10002 are 8, 9, 11, and 12.

8 9 12 u10002 = a1u x + a2 u x + a3u11 x x + a4 u x 8 9 12 u10002 = a1u y + a2 u y + a3u11 y y + a4 u y 8 9 12 u10002 = a1uz + a2 u z + a3u11 z z + a4 uz

These equations simply represent a typical MPC equation. Note that the coefficients are the same for the x, y, and z displacements. This is the consequence of the fact that each displacement component has the same interpolation function. These equations can also be expressed using the RBE3 element. The reason for using the RBE3 element representation is that the amount of data that has to be written is much less than if represented by MPC data. Below one can see the RBE3 data for the grid point 10002.
RBE3 10002 123 10002 9 .2892695 123 .0863064 123 123 12 .5814899 8 .0429342 123 11

Note that the sum of the four coefficients must be to 1.0 which is the consequence of the interpolation scheme. The CDH/SPOT program generates two output files. One contains the CHEXA elements for the spot weld points and the other contains the RBE3 interpolation data. Note that in the case of three joined flanges, two CHEXA elements will be generated, one between each of the two flanges.

APPENDIX A: Test - Analysis Comparison Using CDH/SPOT The table below was obtained from test and analysis of a current typical Body-inWhite model. Data in column XX/SPOT is obtained by using the traditional single point connection. That is, a point on one flange is connected to a point on the other flange. It is well known that this kind of an approach leads to a much too flexible connection.

Test MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE MODE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 24.02 28.62 38.53 39.62 40.32 45.77 51.55 53.70 54.35 55.90 56.31 58.97 60.19 61.37 68.01 69.00 71.07 71.75 76.04 78.03 84.65 87.41 83.02 89.79 90.87 91.07 93.54 95.40 96.05

XX/SPOT 20.96 25.30 33.78 34.74 36.64 42.93 47.46 48.09 50.00 50.97 52.97 53.70 54.65 55.81 57.95 64.30 64.51 65.95 66.89 67.37 68.26 70.08 72.99 73.23 74.55 75.60 76.44 77.61 77.79 79.62 80.66 81.99 84.42 85.24 85.97 87.07 87.88 89.30

CDH/SPOT 24.86 29.80 37.02 40.80 40.94 48.33 53.15 53.51 54.31 56.20 57.85 58.61 60.23 61.70 63.18 68.04 71.34 72.41 73.92 74.25 75.83 78.15 79.19 81.10 81.72 83.63 83.94 85.21 86.81 88.17 89.27

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