Evaluation of the Effect of Boundaries Condition and Welding Sequence on the Out-of-Plane Deformation of Welded Structure by Thermal Elastic–Plastic Analysis

Shipbuilding is one of the industries that has been constantly improving in recent decades. A globalized world has made shipowners require larger and lighter structures, to meet these requirements new machinery and techniques have been developed and researched. However, problems such as welding deformation, tensile residual stresses, and crack propagation are still under study due to the influence of these imperfections on the service life of welded structures. Despite existing new manufacturing techniques, welding deformation is one of the most critical imperfections. This study focuses on the reduction of out-of-plane deformation by analyzing the effect of different welding sequences and boundaries conditions configurations during the welding process of stiffeners used in ship structures, by using commercial Finite Element (FE) software to carry out different Thermo-Elastic-Plastic Analyses (TEPA) and compare the out-of-plane deformation after welding the stiffeners. Numerical results show a reduction of the out-of-plane deformation under optimized welding sequences and boundary conditions.