Peridynamic Simulation for Thermal and Mechanical Behavior of Manufactured Structures with MIG Welding

A new numerical simulation method is developed for the evaluation of thermal and mechanical analyses of manufactured structures with Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding on the basis of the peridynamics. The peridynamic formulations of the weak coupled thermo-mechanical problems are derived based on a heat transfer model and a microplastic model. To simulate the MIG welding process, a birth–death material point method in the peridynamic framework is proposed to model the addition of weld metal to the workpiece. To simplify the calculation process and improve the computational efficiency due to no need of updating the neighbourhoods of material points, an additional scalar field is introduced in the equations to describe the birth and death states of the material points. In addition, the present method is applied to simulate a classical model of two plates being joined together by the MIG welding. The results indicate that the residual tensile deformations are formed in the welded area while the residual compressive deformations are formed far from the wild line after the release of the clamps on account of the plastic deformation. These results also demonstrate the validity of the present method for the simulation of the MIG welding by comparing with the reference solution.