TWI

An investigation is presented into a methodology for simulating the entire friction stir welding (FSW) process using a hybrid mesh free method on a graphics processing unit (GPU) and its implementation for different FSW applications such as butt joints, bobbin tool FSW and a complex joint for an aluminium bridge deck. The hybrid method comprised a combination of smoothed particle hydrodynamics and the finite element method. A fully-coupled thermomechanical formulation was adopted to provide a phenomenological calculation of material deformation, heat generation, temperature distribution and residual stresses. An elastic-plastic material model was employed to incorporate thermal softening and extreme plastic deformation. The code was developed using CUDA Fortran and a GPU parallelisation strategy to reduce calculation time and facilitate simulation of all phases in FSW (clamping, plunge, dwell, advance, retraction, cooling and unclamping).

11th International Symposium, 17-19 May 2016, Session 2B: Modelling I, Paper 04