Abstract
A thermal distortion analysis which takes strains directly as boundary conditions removed barrier of analysis time for the evaluation of welding distortion in a large shell structure like ship block. If the FE analysis time is dramatically reduced, the structure modeling time or the input-value calculating time will become a new issue. On the contrary to this, if the calculation time of analysis input-value is dramatically reduced and its results also are more meaningful, a little longer analysis time could be affirmative. In this study, instead of using inherent strain based on elastic analysis, a thermal strain based on elasto-plastic analysis is used as the boundary condition of weldments in order to evaluate the welding distortion. Here, the thermal strain at the weldment was established by using a stress-strain curve established from the test results. It is possible to automatically recognize the modeling induced-stiffness in the shrinkage direction of welded or heated region. The validity of elasto-plastic thermal distortion analysis was verified through the experiment results with various welding sequence.