Recent Developments for Welding Simulation in LS-DYNA and LS-PrePost

The multi-physics capabilities of LS-DYNA makes it ideal for simulating the welding process where the mechanical and thermal physical regimes are combined to simulate the resulting part tolerance and residual stresses. Welding capabilities are continuously being added to LS-DYNA, e.g. the material models *MAT_CWM and *MAT_CWM_THERMAL which are tailored for CWM simulations. The CWM material models include e.g. ghost element and anneal functionality. However, the challenge when performing this type of simulations is not only related to the solver. The pre-processing quickly becomes a daunting task where the user needs to assign weld paths, weld power and clamping for several weld passes. To accommodate for this, a novel welding GUI has been added to LS-PrePost. The GUI includes e.g. a welding process planner, welding path selection using the graphical interface and welding heat source definition and visualization. Further, the welding process setup is written to an ASCII input file that can be combined with an optimization software to optimize the process with respect to e.g. welding deformations. This paper will present the recent developments in the mechanical and thermal solvers in LS-DYNA to accommodate for welding simulations. Also, the novel Welding GUI in LS-PrePost will be presented together with some application examples.