Develop a Welding Fast-Analysis Solver for Shipbuilding Applications

A user-friendly and fast finite element analysis (FEA) solver for shipbuilding applications is developed by leveraging the work of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Hexagon for the automotive and nuclear industries. This solver will enable quick computation of complex material modeling that can address ongoing design and manufacturing issues in the industry. The primary use-case for the development of this solver will be weld-sequencing simulation of stiffened panel and unit assembly construction. Other potential applications include the optimization of the thermal straightening process used to correct distortion, prediction of heating paths for thermally forming curved shell plates, and optimization of the welding process and structure design to improve toughness and fatigue life. Although the ORNL solver have achieved significant successes in modeling the welding process of automotive and nuclear sectors, initial evaluation showed that it could not be directly used in predicting welding-induced distortion in shipbuilding. The major technical gap was that the ORNL solver only included 8-node solid elements, which is not computationally efficient for analyzing thin ship structures. Given the complex nature of ship structures, a step-by-step approach was taken to add shell elements in the ORNL solver and confirm its accuracy and speed. Currently a full ship panel is analyzed with a transient elastic-plastic solution using the ORNL solver. A GPU-based solver is being developed to further reduce the computational time.