Refined Numerical Simulation and Experimental Investigation on Arc Welded Joints of 6061 Aluminum Alloy

Abstract

In order to improve the simulation accuracy for arc welded structures, the refined numerical simulation approach using the solid model with material mechanical properties has been presented. The arc welded joints are frequently utilized in the manufacture of neighborhood electric vehicle. Firstly, the mechanical properties of the base metal and three types of welded joints were determined by the uniaxial tensile experiments, and experimental results revealed that the mechanical property significantly reduced after welding. Then the numerical simulation approach using solid model and approach using weld constraint were conducted on the butt welded joints of 6061 aluminum alloy in LS-DYNA software, the simulation results were compared with experimental results. Moreover, the refined simulation approach using solid model was validated by different types of arc welded joints and their corresponding experiments. It is concluded that the proposal simulation approach using solid model shows higher accuracy than the approach using weld constraint on predicting deformation of butt welded and fillet welded joints.