Three-dimensional welding analysis using an adaptive mesh

scheme
q
H. Runnemalm
a
, S. Hyun
b
a
Volvo Aero Corporation, 461 81 Trollhattan, Sweden
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden
Received 10 May 1999
Abstract
One major problem arising in nite element analysis of welding is the long computer times required for a complete three-dimen-
sional analysis. An adaptive strategy for coupled thermo-mechanical analysis of welding is applied in order to reduce the computer
time. The paper describes a generic posteriori error formulation that evaluates both the thermal and the mechanical error distribution.
It is combined with a hierarchic remeshing strategy using a so-called graded element. The error indicator together with the known
movement of the local heat source is used to predict areas of renement. An increased accuracy is obtained with a reduced compu-
tational eort. 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Experimental procedures are used for the development of weld processes and schedules, material se-
lection and weld joint design when starting the manufacturing of a new product. The problems associated
with these experimental procedures are costly and time consuming.
Therefore their use in an optimisation process is limited. Combining the experimental procedure with
numerical analysis will enhance the process of forming a welding procedure specication (WPS). It will
make it possible to also consider residual stresses and deformations. It may even be possible to perform
simulation as part of an optimisation process. However, then it is necessary that the required computa-
tional time for a simulation is small.
Researchers have developed the nite element method (FEM) since early 1970 in order to predict the
material response due to welding. The computer power has increased in several orders of magnitude. Still,
the computational cost of a three-dimensional welding analysis is high if a ne mesh is used near the weld.
A number of improvements of the nite element method have been made during the last decade. The
development of grading elements is one of the improvements that signicantly have enhanced modelling of
welding. It facilitates the creation of a graded mesh. This is needed due to the moving, concentrated heat
source and the local eects in the vicinity of the heat aected zone (HAZ). Formulation of grading nite
elements has been proposed by McDill et al. [1] and the use of these elements has been demonstrated in a
number of welding applications [24]. Elements with variable number of nodes and using constraint
equation to make the element conformable is described by Bathe [5]. This type of element was used by
Brown and Song [6] in the analysis of welding.
www.elsevier.com/locate/cma
Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523
q
Correspondence to: L.E. Lindgren, Lulea University of Technology, 971 87 Lulea, Sweden. Tel.: +46 920 91306; fax: +46 920
99692; e-mail: Lars-Erik.Lindgren@cad.luth.se.
0045-7825/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 4 5 - 7 8 2 5 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 3 0 4 - 7
In recent years three-dimensional models in analysis of welding have become more frequent, but still
geometrical complex structures are rarely, if ever, seen. In 1988 the rst full scale three-dimensional model
of a weld using shell elements [7] was presented and in 1990 an analysis using solid element [8] of welds was
presented. The same application, a circumferential weld on a pipe was studied in these models. More re-
cently researchers have presented results from multi-pass welding analysis of three-dimensional pipes [9,10].
2. Basic notation
The nite element formulation used in this work is implemented in an in-house code, SIMPLE. The
reason for using this code is mainly because it includes a large number of tools that are specially designed to
deal with problems arising when setting up welding analysis. Some of them are;
Staggered thermo-mechanical solution process.
Automatic mesh renement and coarsening.
Error indication to control the adaptive meshing (this work).
Automatic assignment of properties to the element in the weldpath, either by the quiet or inactive ele-
ment technique [11].
The ability to assign cut-o temperatures for material properties.
Geometry-based user input for model denition.
Analysis of the microstructure evolution for hypoeutectoid steels [12].
2.1. Welding analysis
Prediction of stresses induced in materials during welding using FEM has been a research task since the
beginning of 1970 [13,14]. A solution to this problem requires the consideration of several processes. First
of all the thermal history of the weld must be predicted. Several authors have used FE analysis to predict
accurate thermal elds, some of those are [9,15,16]. Secondly the mechanical behaviour must be predicted
accurately. In this paper we follow the strategy outlined by Lindgren et al. [11]. The main steps of the
staggered coupled thermo-mechanical analysis performed in this study are shown in Box 1.
Box 1. Main steps in thermo-elastoplastic analysis using a staggered approach.
Step 1. Initialize analysis and start increment stepping
Step 2. Assemble the conductivity and heat capacity matrix for thermal analysis
Use geometry of last converged mechanical solution
Use effective heat capacity matrix
Compute thermal load
Step 3. Solve for the temperature eld
Iterate until convergence is reached (Step 2).
Step 4. Assemble the stiness matrix for mechanical analysis
Use temperature solution to calculate thermal strain (e
th
)
Compute mechanical load
Step 5. Solve for deformations
Perform stress updating
Compute mid point strain
Compute rotation matrices
Rotate all relevant quantities back to unrorate reference
Use an eective stress function (ESF) algorithm to compute stress increment.
Rotate relevant quantities forward to conguration at the end of the time step.
Evaluate residual forces of the solution
Iterate until convergence is reached (Step 4).
Step 6. Go to next time step (Step 2)
516 H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523
Volume changes or transformation plasticity was assumed to be negligible as the material in the welded
parts was an austenitic stainless steel (AISI 304L). The viscous material behaviour at high temperature was
neglected. This means that the total strain rate was decomposed into three components i.e. elastic, plastic
and thermal strain rates.
_ e = _ e
el
_ e
pl
_ e
th
: (1)
The material was considered to be isotropic and the yield criterion according to von Mises was used. The
GreenNaghdi objective stress rate was used. We also assumed an isotropic hardening behaviour. The
material data at elevated temperature are uncertain and numerical problems become more severe at ele-
vated temperature [17], therefore a mechanical cut o temperature at 1000

C was used. The accumulated

plastic strain and thermal expansion was set to zero above this temperature. All mechanical material
properties are evaluated at the cut-o temperature if the computed temperature is above 1000

C. It has
been shown by Oddy et al. [18], that spurious stresses might be introduced into the model if the mechanical
and thermal elds are of dierent orders. To prevent this we used a constant temperature evaluated at the
centre of each subdomain within the graded element.
3. The adaptive remeshing scheme
The concentrated heat input that appears in most welding applications requires a rened discretisation in
the neighbourhood of the weld. The obvious solution to this is to have a mesh with a ne region that is
moving with the heat source. This solution requires some kind of remeshing capability. Tetrahedral element
is frequently used in automatic meshing schemes, however it has been shown that linear hexahedral ele-
ments are superior to linear tetrahedral elements in many applications [19,20]. The work in this paper builds
upon the graded hexahedral element described by McDill et al. [1]. The initial work of an automated
remeshing strategy for welding applications was performed by Lindgren et al. [2]. Their work included
remeshing of a moving region but did not use any error measure of the solution to control the remeshing
scheme. They prescribed the renement/coarsening in the input le so that a smaller distance to the source
gave smaller elements. The size of the element behind the heat source was also predetermined.
3.1. The error measures
Error measures based on gradient elds are employed in order to devise a procedure for automatically
adjusting the element sizes in the FE analysis. The generic posteriori error estimator described by McDill
et al. [21], is deployed in the present work. These errors are computed so that they are not inuenced by
changes of physical dimensions or reference values. Error measurements of gradient elds, stress and heat
ux, are obtained by
e
ex;r
= r
ex
r
fe
; (2)
e
ex;q
= q
ex
q
fe
; (3)
where r
ex
; q
fe
is the exact stress and heat ux and r
fe
; q
fe
is the stress and heat ux by FE analysis.
The exact solutions are not available during the FE analysis. Therefore estimated stress errors e
es
are
obtained from a smoothed continuous gradient eld r
+
and q
+
. This gradient eld is obtained by averaging
the nodal gradients using least square projections [22,23] from the gauss points.
Then estimated errors for element i are obtained as,
e
(i)
es;r
= r
(i)
+
r
(i)
fe
; (4)
e
(i)
es;q
= q
(i)
+
q
(i)
fe
: (5)
The L
2
norms of stress and heat ux errors for element i are expressed as:
|e
(i)
es;r
|
L
2
=
_
X
(i)
[r
(i)
+
_
r
(i)
fe
[
T
[r
(i)
+
r
(i)
fe
[ dX
_
1=2
; (6)
H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523 517
|e
(i)
es;q
|
L
2
=
_
X
(i)
[q
(i)
+
_
q
(i)
fe
[
T
[q
(i)
+
q
(i)
fe
[ dX
_
1=2
: (7)
Then the global error estimate for both stress and heat ux are expressed as
|e
es
|
2
=

M
i=1
|e
(i)
es
|
2
; (8)
where M is total number of elements in the old mesh.
The local and global error estimates are normalized by the smoothed gradient norm. The smoothed
gradient norm for element i is expressed as:
|g
(i)
r
|
L
2
=
_
X
(i)
[r
(i)
+
[
T
[r
(i)
+
[ dX
_ _
1=2
; (9)
|g
(i)
q
|
L
2
=
_
X
(i)
[q
(i)
+
[
T
[q
(i)
+
[ dX
_ _
1=2
: (10)
And their corresponding global values are,
|g|
2
=

M
i=1
|g
(i)
|
2
: (11)
Smoothed gradient norms (9) and (10) are used to normalize the element error estimates given by (6)
and (7).
The normalized local error estimate for element i is expressed as
E
(i)
=
|e
(i)
es
|
|g|
: (12)
Then the normalized global error estimate is given as
E =
|e
es
|
|g|
(13)
The average error for the mesh is
|e
m
|
2
=
|e
es
|
2
M
(14)
and its normalized form is
E
m
=
|e
m
|
|g|
: (15)
The local normalized error value E
(i)
is used to determine where to remesh in the gradient eld.
3.2. The renement strategy
Using the error indicator described above makes it possible to create an optimal new mesh. Two de-
nitions of an optimal mesh, with respect to the error measure, can be found in the literature. The rst one is
proposed by Zienkiewiczs and Zhu [24] and is based on equal distribution of the global error between all
elements in the mesh. The second is proposed by Bugeda et al. [25] and is based on uniform distribution of
the error density in the mesh. This paper will follow the ideas of Zienkiewicz and Zhu.
It is possible to relate the global accuracy (Eq. (16)) and the element accuracy (Eq. (17)) to the char-
acteristic length (h) as
518 H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523
|e| 6C
e
h
pm1
; (16)
|e
(i)
| 6C
e
(i) h
pmd
; (17)
where the characteristic element length (h) of an element is the maximum length of the diagonals in an
element, i refers to a separate element and d is 1, 2 or 3 depending on the dimension of the problem, p is the
order of the shape function used in the element and m is the highest order of differentiation in the strain
displacement relation.
Following the ideas of Li et al. [26] we can formulate a relation between the old and the new charac-
teristic length of an element that is used for analysis in dimension d. We assume that we have a measure of
the normalized element error and the normalized global error in the new mesh described as
E
+
2
=

M
+
i=1
E
+(i)2
; (18)
where the (+) denotes values in the new mesh.
If we assume that we have found a new mesh that is optimal, then the element error should be identical
for all elements in order to satisfy the assumption of equal distribution of the global error in each element.
This yields according to Eq. (14)
E
+(i)
=
1

M
+
_ E
+
: (19)
Using Eq. (17) to compute the element error in the old and the new mesh gives:
E
(i)
= Ch
pmd
; (20)
E
+(i)
= C
+
h
+
pmd
: (21)
We assume that the constant C and C
+
are equal and rearrange Eqs. (19)(21) to get an expression between
the new and the old element sizes.
h
+
=
E
(i)
E
+

M
+
_
_ _
1=pmd ( )
h; (22)
where h and h
+
are the old and the new characteristic length of an element, E
+
is the permissible error in an
element given by the user. M
+
is found by assuming equal distribution of the global error in each element.
M
+
=

M
i=1
E
(i)
es
E
+
_ _
d
pmd
_ _
2(pmd)=(2p2md)
: (23)
The renement strategy is based on the local element error (17) which is believed to give advantageous
result over a strategy based on the global error (16), especially since the error in the mesh comes from a
relatively small region when performing a welding analysis.
A combination of the errors from the thermal and the mechanical elds is used in welding analysis. This
is necessary as the thermal and mechanical elds may have dierent requirements on the element sizes. The
maximum of the thermal and mechanical errors in each element is used in the remeshing.
E
(i)
es
= max E
(i)
r
; E
(i)
q
_ _
: (24)
The user species a lower and an upper element size. Otherwise the automatic renement/coarsening
procedure may lead to extremely small elements or unnecessary large elements. Furthermore, it is necessary
to safeguard against too many elements. The users supply a maximum element error that we would prefer
(E
pref
) in the model. Thus, if the number of elements in the model increases too much, then we loosen the
H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523 519
error criteria up to an upper maximum element error (E
max
). The variable allowable maximum element
error is dened as
E
+
= E
pref
(E
max
E
pref
)e
N ln 2=M ( )
; (25)
where N is the number of elements specied by the user. The characteristic behaviour of Eq. (25) is shown in
Fig. 1. The curves correspond to N of 1000, 4000 and 8000 elements. Using this form of maximum element
error is an ad hoc way of making the modelling part more exible. It does not guarantee a maximum
number of elements in the model, but adds on extra exibility in completing an analysis. Still the analysis
will stop if the error goes to higher than E
max
at the maximum possible size of the model.
4. Welding simulation using adaptive meshing
Two dierent geometries have been analysed to highlight the characteristics of the proposed remeshing
strategy in welding applications. The rst analysis corresponds to circumferential butt welding of a tube
with thickness 2 mm, an inner diameter of 100 mm and a total length of 400 mm. Completion of the
circumferential weld was done in 7.26 s. Symmetry was assumed in the weld plane and the tube was
considered to be free to expand in all directions. The second analysis corresponds to a butt weld of a plate
with dimensions 230 86 2 mm. Completion of a 230 mm long weld was done in 5.11 s. The plate was
xed in all except the welding direction along one of the long sides of the plate. The material was in both
cases AISI 304L, an austenitic stainless steel. Used material data in the analysis are all temperature de-
pendent and can be found in [27]. The welding set-up was a bead on weld using a CO
2
laser with 2700 W as
Fig. 1. The allowable global error in the model vs. number of elements.
Table 1
Renement parameters
Parameter Tube welding Plate welding
Minimum element size 1.5 mm 1.5 mm
Maximum element size 4.0 mm 4.0 mm
Preferable global error 20% 20%
Max global error 30% 30%
N (elements) 5000 5000
520 H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523
output power and a welding speed of 2.7 m/min. The laser equipment was assumed to deliver an overall
eciency of 65%. This gave a net heat input of 1755 W.
The tube and the plate welding analysis was performed using the parameters given in Table 1. It is shown
in Figs. 2a and 3a that the automatic mesh renement using heat ux as error indication produced an
elliptical formed zone in the vicinity of the weld spot. A distinct dierent behaviour is found when using
purely stress renement as parameter. It gives more rened elements behind the arc. This region can be
dicult to predict by a manual procedure as in [2].
The number of elements in the model during the weld analysis is plotted in Fig. 4. It can be seen that the
stress-driven mesh generation produced signicantly more elements than the heat ux-driven. It can also be
seen that the stress-driven analysis requires more elements even after the heat input is nished. This is due
to the residual stress eld that will remain in the welded component. The ux-driven remeshing is creating
much lower number of elements in the model. This is of course due to a smoother gradient eld in the
thermal analysis and also because body cools down to a uniform temperature.
A clear dierence between the two cases when using stress in the error indicator can be seen in Fig. 4. The
tube analysis increases the number of elements during cooling where the plate analysis decreases the
number of elements. This reects a more complicated deformation behaviour in the pipe during cooling.
Fig. 2. Remeshing of a tube using (a) only heat ux and (b) only eective stress.
Fig. 3. Remeshing of a plate using (a) only heat ux and (b) only eective stress.
H. Runnemalm, S. Hyun / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 189 (2000) 515523 521
5. Conclusions
It has been shown that the suggested posteriori error estimate can be used to control the renement
strategy in welding applications. We have not been able to complete an analysis with equal accuracy with a
xed mesh due to lack of physical memory. The tube analysis (using the combined error estimate) required
25 h on an IBM SP2 thin node/120 MHz using 512 Mb RAM.
It is obvious that the dierent error measures produce totally dierent meshes. Thus the combined
procedure should be used in welding applications. It can also be seen that the mesh produced by the
proposed error indicator diers to a signicant level compared to the mesh used in [2]. Their choice of
remeshing is very similar to the mesh produced by pure heat ux based error indication which is more easy
to foresee by a user. The behaviour of the adaptive mesh generation depends on geometry and constraint as
shown. Thus the error-driven mesh generation is necessary when modelling complex three-dimensional
welding problems as even an experienced user may nd it dicult to mesh the model eciently.
Acknowledgements
The nancial support was provided by the Swedish Research Council (TFR) and the Polhem laboratory
at Lulea University of Technology.
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