Abstract
Finite element method is a powerful tool for predicting welding distortion. However, the mechanical phenomena in welding are strong non-linear transient problems and thermal-elastic-plastic FE analysis requires very long computational times. To overcome this problem, an interactive substructure method is developed as a method to reduce the computational time in three-dimensional analysis. In this paper, by comparing with commercial software, the calculation accuracy and speed of this method is discussed. In order to confirm calculation efficiency for a large scale problem, calculation of the model with 670,000 degree of freedoms is performed. Further, calculation of the rotational distortion in FSW is performed and its applicability for practical problems is demonstrated.
