The Application of the Isogeometric Method Based on Bézier Extraction for the Thermo-Plastic Analysis of Welded Steel Plate

In this study, the Bézier extraction based isogeometric method is applied for investigating heat conduction, temperature distribution, and residual stress of welding process in two-dimensional problems. This procedure is introduced by the weak solution method of welding equations. Welding process analysis based on the thermoelastic plastic equation can lead to good accuracy. In the long time welding process with the moving thermal source, there are some difficulties in the re-meshing operation in the analysis. Overcome to these problems, the isogeometric numerical method based on Bézier extraction of NURBS has been used. In this method, the NURBS function transformed to the linear combination of Bernstein functions defined over C0-continuous Bézier elements. In order to verify the analysis, welding residual stress was investigated by the hole-drilling strain gauge method. Finally, a good agreement between the presented isogeometric method and the hole-drilling method was concluded. Thus, the proposed approach is suitable and accurate to analyze the welding temperature distribution and welding residual stress field.