Analysis on laser welding deformation of titanium alloy thin plate based on solid-shell coupling model

An efficient solid-shell coupling model was proposed to simulate laser welding deformation of titanium alloy thin plate. The elements used in the region near the weld seam were solid elements to characterize the thermal/mechanical nonuniformity along plate thickness during welding process, while the elements used in the region away from the weld zone were shell elements to reduce the number of the elements. Contacts were established at the interface of solid and shell elements, and welding deformation was calculated using MPC algorithm. Laser welding deformation of TC1 titanium alloy with 0.8 mm in thickness was simulated by solid-shell coupling model and three-dimensional solid model, respectively. The simulated results indicate that the calculation results of the two models both match well with the experimental deformation. The calculation time of solid-shell coupling model is about 30% of the three-dimensional solid model. So it can be concluded that the solid-shell coupling model can not only predict the welding deformation accurately in the welding process, but also improve the computational efficiency.