Finite element analysis results visualization of manual metal arc welding using an interactive mixed reality-based user interface

Abstract

Welding is extensively used in manufacturing industries for various applications. However, residual stress is induced due to the non-uniform temperature distribution on the weld plates during the welding process, which significantly affects the fatigue strength. In addition, the non-uniform expansion and contraction of the weld and surrounding base metal cause structural distortion. The distortion affects final product quality and results in lower productivity. Therefore, the structural analysis of the welded component is significantly important. In this work, a mixed reality (MR)-based user interface was developed to overlay the finite element analysis (FEA) results on the real weld plates in real time for manual metal arc welding (MMAW). Since the numerical simulation using FEA requires a large number of computational resources, a gradient boosted regression tree (GBRT) model was trained to predict the residual stress and deformation results. Furthermore, a lookup table and a trilinear interpolation method were used to render the results based on users' input data using Microsoft HoloLens 2 in real time. The developed interactive MR-based user interface can help welders quickly predict and control the residual stress and welding distortion before the real welding process and help novices learn the relationship between the welding parameters and the induced residual stress and deformation.