Mechanical behavior of single-layer reticulated shell connected by welded hollow spherical joints with considering welding residual stress

Abstract

The welded hollow spherical joints (WHSJ) have been widely used in space lattice structures. There have been many researchers investigating the mechanical behavior of WHSJ. But few literatures that considered the influence of welding residual stress can be found, let alone the integral structure analysis considering welding residual stress. In this paper, welding residual stress of WHSJ was firstly obtained by conducting thermal elastic–plastic analysis. Then, influence of welding residual stress on mechanical behavior of WHSJ was investigated. Secondary development of finite element software ANSYS was conducted, and the welding residual stress was applied as initial load. Finally, the mechanical behavior of a single-layer reticulated shell was investigated by considering residual stress. By using the method proposed in this paper, the simulation of welding process needs to be conducted only once to get the residual stress field of the integral structure. Amazing computational cost was avoided, and it makes it possible to investigate the influence of welding residual stress on integral structures.