FE-model for prediction of welding distortions in components made of preformed stainless steel sheets

Abstract: This master thesis was carried out at Scania CV AB. The focus for this thesis is the prediction of welding distortions that can cause problems in the manufacturing process of Scania's after-treatment system. The after-treatment system is mainly assembled by sheet metal plates of the ferritic stainless steel EN 1.4509. The plates are welded together. When welding, distortions and residual stresses occur, and they also depend on the sequence in the component was welded together. The distortions and residual stresses can cause tolerance related issues and a lower lifetime for the welded components. Experiments are expensive and therefore it is desirable to simulate the welding process, thereby controlling distortions and optimizing welding sequences. To simulate the welding process and predict the welding distortions a thermo-mechanical FE-model was created for two typical welds found on the after-treatment system. The first scenario was two thin plates welded onto each other in an overlap weld joint and the second scenario was a thin plate welded onto a thick plate in a overlap weld joint. After the FE-model was compared to the experiments. An optimization of the welding sequences was also made on a larger component typically found on the after-treatment system. The FE-model can predict the distortion shape with good accuracy for the T-fillet weld, while the model predicted a more symmetric distortion shape on the overlap weld compared to a more asymmetric shape found on the experiments, but the error is still not very large. The Fe-model can also be used to optimize the welding sequence for bigger components on the after-treatment system within a reasonable time span compared to doing the opimization manually in an experiment.