Butt welds with orthotropic behavior are widely applied in mechanical and structural designs. Since welds cannot always be perfect in practice, it is important to understand the weld’s stress behavior under different imperfect geometries. In this paper research has been performed to investigate the relationship between stress intensity factors and change of geometry of orthotropic butt welds. Finite element methods were applied to simulate weld geometries. The simulation was performed using ANSYS software assuming two beams are welded together with a discontinuity at the bottom of the weld. The combined beams and the butt weld are then considered to be one piece of glued structure. The discontinuity in the structure is used to model a crack and lack of weld penetration. By changing three important factors of the weld geometry under uniform axial static loads, the trend of stress intensity factor behavior versus change of geometry has been investigated. Both single and double sided butt welds were considered in this paper. The results of this investigation will be a helpful tool for design engineers in deciding the best weld geometry in applications.
Isogeometric Analysis and Bayesian Optimization on Efficient Weld Geometry Design for Remarkable Stress Concentration Reduction
