Author(s)

T.T. Chau & F. Besnier

Abstract

Numerical simulation of welding in shipbuilding T.T. Chau & F. Besnier PRINCIPIA Marine (ex Institut de Recherches de la Construction Navale), France Abstract In the context of a fierce competition between European and Asian shipyards, quality and productivity improvement are of major importance. Continuous work has always been done on welding techniques : 0 to increase the efficiency of the traditional Arc welding technology; to master the new technology of metal joining by Laser welding; to adopt a Laser-Arc combination process (Hybrid Laser welding). In this paper, advantages and drawbacks of each process are briefly analysed. A short presentation of the PRINCIPIA methodology of numerical simulation initially developed for Arc welding process is presented and an adaptation to Laser and Hybrid Laser process is then described enabling for a new shipbuilding project to predict, control and optirnise the design and/or the welding parameters in order to avoid excessive distortions due to weldin

Keywords