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Welding Distortion
Welding Distortion
Structure
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ABSTRACT. Welding thin-plate panel ables are welding process, heat input, awareness, using flatter plates and
structures often results in warping of the travel speed and welding sequence. straighter stiffeners to control the initial
panels. Several mitigation methods, in- In principle, welding distortion con- conditions, reducing weld size by im-
cluding preheating and prestressing the trol practices for thin-wall panel struc- proving joint fitup and eliminating struc-
plates during assembly, have been inves- tures may be classified as follows: turally irrelevant rework.
tigated and used by some fabricators. Use design practices that make dis- The implementation of distortion mit-
This paper studies the distortion mecha- tortion-free panels easier to produce. igation techniques during welding coun-
nisms and the effect of welding sequence These design practices include choosing teracts the effects of shrinkage during
on panel distortion. In this study, distor- plates with appropriate thickness, reduc- cooling, which distorts the fabricated
tion behaviors, including local plate ing stiffener spacing, using a bevel T-stiff- structure. These mitigation techniques in-
bending and buckling as well as global ener web, optimizing assembly sequenc- clude controlled preheating, mechanical
girder bending, were investigated using ing, properly applying jigs and fixtures tensioning, thermal tensioning, pre-bend-
the finite element method. It was found and using the egg-crate construction ing fillet joints, presetting butt joints and
that buckling doesn’t occur in structures technique (Ref. 1). using appropriate heat sinking arrange-
with a skin-plate thickness of more than Better control of certain welding vari- ments. All these mitigation techniques are
1.6 mm unless the stiffening girder bends ables will eliminate the conditions that to balance weld shrinkage forces. Heat
excessively. Warping is primarily caused promote distortion. This includes reduc- sinking also balances welding heat about
by angular bending of the plate itself. The ing fillet weld size and length, including the neutral axis of the joint.
joint rigidity method (JRM) was found to tack welds; using high-speed welding; Some of the aforementioned distor-
be effective in determining the optimum using a low heat input welding process; tion control methods may increase fabri-
welding sequence for minimum panel using intermittent welds; using a backstep cation costs due to requirements for more
warping. technique; and balancing heat about the energy, increased labor and potentially
plate’s neutral axis in butt joint welding. high-cost capital equipment. Some
Introduction Incorporate a welding QC program. methods may not be suitable for auto-
This program should include personnel mated welding or may reduce the as-
Warping is a common problem expe- training on general quality control prac- sembly speed due to interruption from
rienced in the welding fabrication of thin- tice in order to reduce distortion through fixtures or stiffener arrangements. De-
walled panel structures. Several factors pending on circumstances of the fabrica-
that influence distortion control strategy tion environment and type of structures,
may be categorized into design-related different distortion control methods may
and process-related variables. Significant provide more adequate solutions to cer-
design-related variables include weld KEY WORDS tain problems than others. Understand-
joint details, plate thickness, thickness ing their capability and limitation of all
transition if the joint consists of plates of Distortion these distortion control methods is criti-
different thickness, stiffener spacing, Thin Plate cal to a successful welding fabrication
number of attachments, corrugated con- FEM project.
struction, mechanical restraint condi- Finite Element Method
tions, assembly sequence and overall Aluminum Plate Literature Review
construction planning. Important vari- Gas Metal Arc
GMAW Warping of thin-walled panel struc-
Joint Rigidity tures has been investigated with both ex-
C. L. TSAI and W. T. CHENG are with The Buckling perimental and numerical methods used
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. S. C. by many researchers (Refs. 2–15). In the
PARK is with Hyundai Industrial Research In- 1950s, Watanabe and Satoh (Ref. 2) ob-
stitute, Korea.
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B
B
served bucking phenomenon in welding steel, Al 5083-O and stainless steel. studied the predictive methods for weld-
of a thin mild steel plate. Masubuchi (Ref. Terai, et al. (Ref. 7), investigated sev- ing-induced distortions using the finite
3) later extended the work and observed eral mitigation methods to minimize element method (FEM). Models with var-
a similar phenomenon. Both experimen- welding distortion in thin-plate panels for ious complexities were developed. Many
tal studies used bead-on-plate coupons ship superstructures. These methods in- complex models contributed to the
with relatively long and narrow strips. cluded preheating, prestressing and pre- knowledge of distortion, but might be im-
In the 1970s, Taniguchi (Ref. 4) inves- setting. Angular bending of the panel practical for industrial applications due
tigated angular bending of fillet-welded plates was reduced substantially when to the required computational intensity.
aluminum panel structures using an inte- these mitigation methods were applied in Simplified engineering approaches, such
grated numerical and experimental ap- welding fabrication. as the inherent shrinkage model, have
proach. A relationship was developed Penso (Ref. 8) conducted numerical been studied. Daniewicz (Ref. 9) pre-
between angular changes and plate and experimental investigations to ana- sented a hybrid experimental and nu-
thickness for various fillet sizes and span lyze bending distortion of a mild steel merical approach to predict weld distor-
widths. Pattee (Ref. 5) conducted experi- panel structure. An engineering method, tion of large offshore structures.
ments to investigate buckling behaviors commonly referred to as the “inherent Experimentally determined weld shrink-
of aluminum plates with different shrinkage method,” was used to deter- age values were implemented into the
boundary conditions. His experimental mine the distortion. The numerical re- structural FEM model to predict the struc-
work reached similar conclusions. sults were in good agreement with the tural rigidity interaction and the final
In 1976, based on their comprehen- experimental results. This work further equilibrium state, namely, distortion.
sive research results, Satoh and Terasaki analyzed the experimental panel struc- More recently, Michaleris and De-
(Ref. 6) proposed simple formulas that ture, investigated by Terai, et al. (Ref. 7), Biccari (Ref. 10) studied the numerical
correlate residual stress, angular bending and verified the beneficial effect of pre- analysis technique to predict welding-
and transverse shrinkage to the welding heating and prestressing on out-of-plane induced distortion in large and complex
heat input for different materials, includ- distortion of the panel. structures. The technique combined
ing mild steel, high-strength steel, 9% Ni For many years, researchers have two-dimensional welding simulations
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S.S
F.E:
free
edge
F.E F.E 24
S.S:
simple
support
Y
S.S
Fig. 6 — Butt joint groove-welded rectangular aluminum
X b
2 2 (unit : inch) plate for residual stress characterization (Ref. 6).
Fig. 8 — Distribution and magnitude of the longitudinal residual stress at the panel’s mid-length. A — Width: 40.6 cm; B — width: 61 cm; C —
width: 81.3 cm.
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a custom-designed, gantry-type measur-
ing system was developed by the Inter-
national Welding Technology Research
Laboratory at National Taiwan Univer-
sity. The measuring system consists of
three major components: 1) a frame
structure with linear, optical scale tracks
and a three-axis movement mechanism,
2) the electronic displacement measur-
ing dial gauge with computer interface
and 3) a three-point, ball-joint, panel
support table with rollers. C D
The frame keeps a constant reference
and level for the table that supports the
panel. It also provides a precision travel-
ling mechanism for locating the mea-
surement points. When the panel is fin-
ished with any weld pass off the
measurement system, it is placed on the
table at three ball-joint supports, which
are fixed at three adjustable corner loca-
tions. These three-point supports always
maintain a reference triangular plane for
the panel when the table is jacked up to
the reference seatings in the frame. Each
time after loading and unloading of the
Fig. 16 — Distortion displacements at four cross sections of the panel from four welding sequences.
panel, the panel displacements are al-
ways measured in the same reference A — At x = 40.6 cm; B — at x = 81.3 cm; C — at y = 23.6 cm; D — at y = 76.2 cm.
and leveling condition.
Figure 17 shows the comparisons be-
tween the predicted distortions and the B
measured displacements across two lon-
A
gitudinal cross sections (x = 40.6 cm and
81.3 cm) and two transverse cross sec-
tions (i.e., y = 23.6 cm and 76.2 cm) for
welding sequence No. 4. Good agree-
ment between predicted and measured
displacements in all four cross sections is
shown.
A B
welding the outer joints of the edge
stiffeners in any order. This chasing-
the-rigidity method is referred to as the
joint rigidity method (JRM).
Using the concept of JRM, the op-
timum welding sequence, designated
as A (Fig. 19), was determined for the
aluminum panel structure under inves-
tigation. The determination procedure
is summarized as follows:
After completing each weld pass
(including tack welds), a distributed
unit moment is applied to each joint
Fig. 20 — Joint rigidity indices at the unwelded joints. A — After 6th weld pass; B — after 12th
one at a time to determine the elastic
weld pass.
angular rotation at all joints in the
panel structure. The magnitude of the
calculated joint curvatures is normal-
A B ized by the maximum value obtained
from the panel structure under its pre-
scribed initial conditions (i.e., before
structural welding starts with all tack
welds completed). This normalized
parameter is the rigidity index of each
joint. The joint rigidity indices may
change after completing each weld
pass since the solidified weld becomes
an integral part of the panel structure.
Therefore, the rigidity index calcula-
tions repeat after each welding pass to
locate the most rigid joint for laying
the next weld.
To illustrate the joint rigidity of each
C D individual joint after completion of any
weld pass, Fig. 20A shows the calcu-
lated rigidity index of the remaining
joints after completing the sixth weld
pass. The optimum location for the sev-
enth pass is shown by the highest index
number (0.89). After completing the
12th weld pass, the optimum next pass
location is shown by the index of 0.72
— Fig. 20B. The rigidity index is the
joint stiffness normalized by the maxi-
mum value calculated in the panel dur-
ing the assembly process. The index
values vary from 0 to 1.
Fig. 21 — Comparison of distortions resulting from welding sequence No. 1 and the optimum weld- Figure 21 shows the displacement
ing sequence A. A — At x = 40.6 cm; B — at x = 81.3 cm; C — at y = 23.6 cm; D — at y = 76.2 cm. comparisons between sequence No. 1
and the optimum sequence A. It shows
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dustries, Ltd. ments. The Welding Institute Research Report
2. Watanabe, M., and Satoh, K. 1959. Fun- 374. Abington, Cambridge, U.K.
This study demonstrated that during damental study on buckling of thin steel plate 13. Guan, Q., Guo, D., et al. 1987.
the welding assembly of a panel structure due to bead-welding. J. Japan Weld. Soc. Method and Apparatus for Low Stress and
a skin plate of normal thickness (e.g., 27(6): 13–20. Non-Distortion Welding of Thin-Walled
>1.6 mm) can only buckle when the 3. Masubuchi, K. 1959. New approach to Structural Elements. Chinese Patent No.
panel bends globally to cause a large cur- the problem on residual stress and deforma- 87100959.
vature in the skin plate. The structural tion due to welding. Transportation Technical 14. Guan, Q., Brown, K. W., Guo, D., et
weight and bending of the stiffeners re- Research Institute Report 8(12). al. 1988. International patent specification
sult in the global panel bending. Weld 4. Taniguchi, C. 1972. Out-of-plane dis- No. PCT/GB88/00136.
shrinkage in the T joints causes angular tortion caused by fillet welds in aluminum. 15. Park, S. C. 1988. Distortion mecha-
distortion in the skin plate. Master’s thesis. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. nisms and control methodology for welding
Locating welds closer to the neutral 5. Pattee, F. M. 1975. Buckling distortion thin-plate panel structures. Ph.D dissertation,
axes of the panel cross sections can con- of thin aluminum plates during welding. Mas- The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
trol the global bending and minimize ter’s thesis. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 16. Thermophysical Properties Research
welding distortion of a stiffened panel. 6. Satoh, K., and Terasaki, T. 1976. Effect Center. 1973. Properties of aluminum and alu-
Other mitigation methods include using of welding conditions on residual stress distri- minum alloys. TPRC Report 21. Purdue Uni-
heavier stiffeners to increase the moment butions and welding deformation in welded versity.
of inertia of the cross section or the egg- structures materials. J. Japan Weld. Soc. 45(1): 17. Metals Handbook, Vol. 2, 10th edition.
crate fabrication method to drastically 42–53. 1990. ASM International, Materials Park,
improve the bending resistance of the 7. Terai, K., Matsui, S., Kinoshita, T., et al. Ohio.
panel structure. 1976. Study on Prevention of Welding Defor- 18. CINDAS, Structural Alloys Handbook.
Using the optimum welding sequence mation in Thin-Skin Plate Structures. 1994. Purdue University.
can improve the flatness of the panel and Kawasaki Technical Review 61: 61–66. 19. Voorhees, H. R., and Freeman, J. W.
minimize angular distortion in the skin 8. Penso, J. A. 1992. Development of a PC- 1960. Report on the elevated temperature
plate. The joint rigidity method is effec- based FEM model to predict weld distortion. properties of aluminum and magnesium al-
tive in determining the optimum welding Master’s thesis. The Ohio State University, loys, ASTM STP no. 291.
sequence for minimum angular distor- Columbus, Ohio.
tion in the skin plate of stiffened panel 9. Daniewicz, S. R., McAninch, M. D., Mc-
structures. Farland, B., and Knoll, D. 1993. Application
of distortion control technology during fabri-
Acknowledgments cation of large offshore structures. Proc. of
AWS/ORNL International Conference on
The authors would like to acknowl- Modeling and Control of Joining Processes.
edge China Shipbuilding Corp., Hyundai 10. Michaleris, P., and DeBiccari, A. 1997.
Heavy Industries, Ltd., and International Prediction of welding distortion. Welding
Welding Technology Research Labora- Journal 76(4): 172-s to 179-s.
tory for supporting this study. 11. Burak, et al. 1977 and 1979. Automatic