Welded connections are often the initiation sites of failure. Welds can contain sharp section changes, local discontinuities, high tensile residual stresses, and relatively low fatigue strength. The primary failure mechanism in welds is fatigue caused by propagation of cracks that are present from the welding process. The method of modeling welds in a structural analysis is critical for predicting the structural response and subsequent life.

This 30 minute e-Learning session demonstrates approaches to modeling welded connections in ANSYS.

Topics Covered:

Review of weld geometry and terminology.
Description of finite element methods for calculating the critical stresses in welds.
Review of approaches for fatigue analysis of welds.