Abstract
Many components used in the aerospace industry have complex shape and are manufactured from high strength materials. Performing large scale tests is costly and time consuming, therefore, simulation tools are needed to support an effective product development process. Using manufacturing simulations during product development requires a validated model of the material and manufacturing process. In this paper, a validation scheme is proposed for thermomechanical models of welding and post-weld heat treatment. The scheme was investigated by comparing simulations using shell elements with experimental results, which showed good agreement when predicting residual stresses after welding, but an overestimation of the out-of-plane deformations when simulating both welding and heat treatment. However, the simulations showed that the outof-plane deformation is strongly influenced by the initial geometry. It can be concluded that the simulation model is adequately accurate to be used in concept evaluation.
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