Thermal Analysis on Butt Welded Aluminium Alloy AA7075 Plate Using FEM

Thermo-mechanical finite element analysis has been performed to assess the residual stress in the butt weld joints of aluminium Alloy AA7075 plates by utilizing the commercial software package ABAQUS. This paper presents an efficient FE technique using equivalent load to precisely predict welding deformations and residual stresses in butt joints. The radial heat flux distribution is considered on the top surface of the weldment. Convective and radiative heat losses are taken into account through boundary conditions for the outward heat flux. Linear FE transient thermal analysis is performed using surface heat source model with Gaussian distribution to compute highest temperature in AA7075 plates. The objective of this project is to simulate the welding process by using the finite element method. After the model is built and verified, the main objective of this project is to study the effects of varying the welding process parameters on the thermo-mechanical responses. In addition to that, the aim of this research is also to find a relationship between welding parameters and the responses of single pass butt welding are evaluated through the finite element analysis. The study of this paper covers the effects of varying heat input, welding speed on the thermo-mechanical responses of the weldment after cooling down to room temperature