Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Influence of Location of Transient Thermal Tensioning on Mitigating Buckling Distortion during Thin
Plates Fillet Welding
Bin Yi, Jiangchao Wang
School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

and/or skin plates, which can improve strength of welded structures inshipbuilding, automobile and aerospace industries. Moreover, with theconcept of lightweight construction, thin steel plates have been used
more and more to save energy and increase load-carrying capacity(Liang et al., 2018). Due to weak stability as well as large heat input infillet welding with thin plates, buckling distortion is prone to be
produced and seriously affects the construction accuracy and cost (Li etal., 2021). As a result, predicting and mitigating buckling distortion in
welded structures are of great significance in enhancing structural
integrity and productivity.
In the past decades, investigations of buckling distortion induced bywelding with experimental and numerical methods have been reported.
Watanabe et al. (1957) observed that there are two representative
buckling modes (concave-convex and convex-concave type) in beadon-plate welding experiment on thin plates. Based on experimentalresults, Terasaki et al. (1998) indicated that the buckling of weldedplate was influenced by welding conditions, material properties andsizes of plate. Deo et al. (2003a) successfully predicted the occurrenceof welding induced buckling through decoupled 2D welding simulationand 3D eigenvalue buckling analyses, which were verified byexperiments using welding conditions identical to those in FE
simulation. Zaeem et al. (2007) examined local and global buckling
distortion of a thin-walled aluminum T joint during and after welding;
local buckling was investigated by analyzing the history of stress andstrain relations, and global buckling instability was determined by thecombination of residual stresses and eigenvalue methods. Deng et al.
(2008) developed a FE method for predicting welding distortion of thelarge thin plate panel structures, which involved thermo-elastic-plastic
FE analysis and large deformation elastic FE analysis based on inherent
strain theory and interface element. Reducing heat input or increasing
thickness of plate can noticeably decrease the buckling propensity, andbuckling mode induced by welding was related to the spacing between
two stiffeners. Wang et al (2014 and 2022) clarified the mechanism of
welding induced buckling in thin plate welded structures by means of

ABSTRACT
Buckling distortion is prone to be produced in fillet welding forlightweight construction, and transient thermal tensioning (TTT) as an
in-process method can improve construction accuracy with lower costof the stiffened plate structures. The fillet welding experiment underconventional welding was carried out. A warping shape of flange plate
was observed after cooling down, which was a typical pattern ofbuckling distortion during thin plates fillet welding. A finite element(FE) model for thermal elastic plastic (TEP) analysis was established toinvestigate thermal-mechanical behavior in fillet welding. The
computed welding distortion has a good agreement with measured
results using a three-dimensional optical scanning system; hence theaccuracy of FE computation was verified. Then, TTT was implemented
based on the established FE model, in which additional heat source
moving with welding arc was applied to the flange plate. When theheating magnitude of additional heat source was fixed, its locations (d1 :offset from welding arc perpendicular to welding line and d2 : offset
from welding arc along welding line) play an essential role inmitigating buckling distortion and tendon force, the influence of which
was numerically examined and discussed. The results show that
additional heat sources should be placed at an appropriate distanceaway from welding line and be later than welding arc to obtain a better
result for mitigating buckling distortion. Also, the mechanism ofbuckling distortion mitigation with TTT was clarified by the reductionof tendon force.

KEY WORDS: Buckling distortion; transient thermal tensioning;
fillet welding; TEP analysis; tendon force.
INTRODUCTION
Fillet welding is widely employed for joining stiffeners to stiffeners

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