ESI Group

Description of the Welding

Simulation Suite
Distortion Engineering V2010 / Sysweld V2011 /
Visual Environment V7.0
The ESI Weld Team

11

Date:

30th of August 2011

Subject:

Description of the Welding Simulation Suite of ESI

Distortion Engineering 2010, SYSWELD 2011 and VISUAL WELD 7.0

Dear Valued Customer,

In this document, you will find a brief description of the Welding Simulation Suite.
We appreciate your continuous interest in our products and services.
Best regards,
The ESI Weld Team

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CONTENTS
Overview .................................................................................................................................................................... 5
What Can You Do With It ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Workflow ................................................................................................................................................................ 5
The Welding Simulation Suite - Available Packages...................................................................................................... 7
The Welding Simulation Suite - Available DVDs .......................................................................................................... 8
PAM-Assembly and Weld Planner Package.............................................................................................................. 8
Welding Simulation SUITE 2011 DVD Distortion Engineering ............................................................................ 8
Welding Package..................................................................................................................................................... 8
Sysweld V2011 DVD ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Visual Environment V7.0 DVD ............................................................................................................................. 9
Visual Mesh V7.0 ................................................................................................................................................ 9
Visual Weld V7.0 ................................................................................................................................................. 9
Visual Viewer V7.0 .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Whats New .............................................................................................................................................................. 10
Weld Planner Package........................................................................................................................................... 10
Welding Package................................................................................................................................................... 10
Enabling Virtual Welding Engineering ............................................................................................................... 10
Improvements of the Present Version in Bullet Points ............................................................................................... 17
Weld Planner Package (Shrinkage Method) ....................................................................................................... 17
PAM-Assembly Package (LocaL-global Method) ................................................................................................ 17
Welding Package (Transient Method) ............................................................................................................... 17
Language .................................................................................................................................................................. 18
Toolbox CD................................................................................................................................................................ 18
Users Guides and Getting Started Manuals ............................................................................................................... 18
Step-By-Step Tutorials ............................................................................................................................................... 18
Engineering Guide ..................................................................................................................................................... 18
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Online Manuals ......................................................................................................................................................... 19

Online Help ............................................................................................................................................................... 19
More about the Distortion Engineering DVD ............................................................................................................. 20
Pre-Computed Examples ........................................................................................................................................... 21
More on Post Processing ........................................................................................................................................... 22
Visual Viewer Starting from V5.5 ........................................................................................................................... 22
Getting More Information ......................................................................................................................................... 26
Release Notes ....................................................................................................................................................... 26
The Welding Simulation Suite Information for Research & Development............................................................ 26

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OVERVIEW
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH IT

If You
Want to virtually manufacture each welded design before it is fabricated or repaired.
Work with sheet metal, heavy plates, or both.
Work with structural steel, complex materials, or dissimilar metals in the aerospace, energy, nuclear or chemical
industry.
Require that your welded designs meet tolerance requirements, at minimum cost and within minimum time without the necessity of incorporating all the details of complex physics.
Need to optimize the distortion of a welding assembly, taking into account all process details.
Need to ensure that the microstructure after welding meets your requirements.
Need to determine residual stresses as a basis for a high cycle low amplitude fatigue analysis, and to discover
problem zones in the design.
Want to understand the stress and fracture mechanics of the cladding, the heat treatment, and the welding process
of large dissimilar metal welded assemblies caused by the fabrication or repair process.

You Can
With the Welding Simulation Suite from ESI
WORKFLOW

WELD PLAN
At the beginning of Virtual Welding Engineering, there is a Weld Plan. In many cases, with the components, weld
processes, weld passes, clamps and materials involved in a weld design, it is necessary to provide an overview and to
be able to communicate to the team and customers the details of the virtual welding fabrication process. The
Welding Simulation Suite from ESI incorporates highly efficient tools for virtual welding fabrication planning that
allows smart communication and team alignment to the task.

CAD AND FEM MODELLING

A state of the art meshing tool is integrated in Visual Environment, the solution platform of the Welding Simulation
Suite. It includes powerful tools dedicated to weld modeling.

MATERIAL DATA
Material properties are complex, in particular, if thermal and metallurgical properties are involved. The material data
manager based on Microsoft Excel helps you to view, manipulate and generate properties with all the capabilities
offered by Microsoft Excel. Existing databases cover the most frequently used materials in automotive, aerospace,
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chemical, energy & nuclear and heavy Industries, and can be used as basis for new material databases. All of the
physics of each material is incorporated in the material database there is no need to deal with material property
details when you set up a simulation.

PROCESS SET UP
State of the art graphical user interfaces dedicated to welding engineering allow you to set up a virtual welding
fabrication process in the shortest time possible, requiring only welding engineering knowledge. No particular
education in simulation engineering is needed to set up and run a welding simulation.

SOLUTION
For fast distortion engineering, the ESI Virtual Performance Solution solver is used an innovative new tool offering
unmatched Distributed Memory Processing (DMP) performance for large welded assemblies. For all simulations
involving the complexity of the material physics, the SYSWELD solver is used. It is the most precise multi-physics
solver for welding and heat treatment processes in the market. A team of engineers and scientists received the
Kenneth Easterling Award for a perfect correlation between computed and measured residual stresses. Despite all
complexity covered, the numerical details are computed by the software and the solution is completely automated.
Above all, the solver scales well on 16-processor DMP configurations, with a solve-time improvement factor of 8.
Thanks to advanced simulation engineering methods, you are able to solve complex problems. Large pressure vessel
fabrication involving 100reds of m of welds, dissimilar materials and various process steps such as cladding, heat
treatment and welding are solved in a reasonable time frame, without neglecting material physics or fabrication
details. SYSWELD provides access to a new Universe of virtual welding engineering.

VISUALIZATION OF COMPUTED RESULTS

A state of the art post-processing tool is integrated in Visual Environment, the solution platform for the Welding
Simulation Suite. It includes powerful tools dedicated to providing deep insight in welding fabrication effects. Above
all, you have the ability to review several computed results at the same time in multiple windows, synchronized
through fabrication process, and to directly compare variants, displaying not only the variants, but also the
differences between the variants, no matter which result quantity is concerned.

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THE WELDING SIMULATION SUITE - AVAILABLE PACKAGES

The Welding Simulation Suite includes the following packages.

The capabilities of these packages are described in more detail in the following document. Please contact your local
dealer to get a copy.

How to achieve your goals

Available simulation packages
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Preparation of the CAD model

Distortion Engineering Quick evaluation
Distortion Engineering Process security
Material data management
Weld Quality Fabrication details
Spot Welding
Distinctive Competence

THE WELDING SIMULATION SUITE - AVAILABLE DVDS

The Welding Simulation Suite includes the following DVDs.
PAM-ASSEMBLY AND WELD PLANNER PACKAGE
WELDING SIMULATION SUITE 2011 DVD DISTORTION ENGINEERI NG

WELD PLANNER V2.0

Fast Distortion Engineering based on a shrinkage method, includes pre-processing, the solver and basic postprocessing. CAD importing and meshing are done with VISUAL MESH. Advanced post-processing is done with VISUAL
VIEWER.
PAM-ASSEMBLY V5.0
Precision Distortion Engineering and Weld Quality & Residual Stresses for local models, based on the local-global
method, including pre-processing, solver and post-processing. CAD importing and meshing are done with VISUAL
MESH.
WELDING PACKAGE
SYSWELD V2011 DVD

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The Heat Treatment & Weld Quality Simulation solver, including all material physics, particularly phase
transformation and mechanics. CAD importing and meshing are done with VISUAL MESH. The weld simulation is set up
with VISUAL WELD. Post-processing is done with VISUAL VIEWER.

The traditional Graphic User Interface is still available to allow access to functionalities that have not yet been ported
to VISUAL ENVIRONMENT.
VISUAL ENVIRONMENT V7.0 DVD

VISUAL MESH V7.0

VISUAL MESH enables CAD importing and meshing.
VISUAL WELD V7.0
VISUAL WELD enables the definition of the Welding Process and the solution management.
Attention: VISUAL WELD requires the SYSWELD solver V2011.
VISUAL VIEWER V7.0
VISUAL VIEWER allows Multi-physics Post-Processing with result comparison and synchronized animations of different
result quantities.
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WHATS NEW
WELD PLANNER PACKAGE
The graphic user interface has been ported to 64-bit Windows platforms.
A new solver the virtual performance solver has been plugged in.
The solver runs in DMP for multiple processors. The speedup is illustrated below.

450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

TIME (mn)

1P

4P

8P

16P

32P

The resulting file size has been reduced by a factor of 5.

WELDING PACKAGE
ENABLING VIRTUAL WELDING ENGINEERING
A co-operation with SLV Rostock / SLV Munich,the software WeldWare enables you to perform Virtual Welding
Engineering.

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WELDWARE
WeldWare is a modular welding advisory system, which provides the calculation of thermal transients during
welding.

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With Weldware you can generate and validate the process parameters you need to perform distortion engineering,
weld quality and residual stress analyses for complex structures.
WeldWare allows you to;

Calculate schematic welding TTT diagrams according to the chemical composition

Calculate microstructure in the heat affected zone, depending on chemical composition and cooling time
Calculate hardness, yield strength, tensile strength, elongation, reduction of area and impact values
depending on chemical composition and cooling time
Consider scatter of charges during the determination of mechanical properties or cooling times
Calculate the true material composition in multi-pass welds, pass by pass, depending on base and wire
materials, and calculate the properties of the material mix
Determine the necessary heat input and pre-heat temperature. This works well for aluminum, titanium,
nickel and (high) alloyed steels
Calculate the cooling time depending on the welding process, welding parameters, pre-heating temperature,
joint type and material thickness

Once the process parameters and properties are validated, the generated data serves as basis for simulations on
complex structures. The following tools help to complete the information needed for transient welding simulations.
STRAIN HARDENING CALIBRATION TOOL
The strain hardening tool helps to generate engineering data, depending on material temperature and phases. Data
for austenite, depending on the carbon content, is built in.

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PHASE TRANSFORMATION CALIBRATION TOOL

The phase transformation tool helps to calibrate iso-thermal and continuous phase transformations. It makes use of
the SYSWELD solver to compute the required data automatically. You only need to enter the engineering data.

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The results, for example a CCT diagram - can be displayed as follows.

MATERIAL DATA MANAGER

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The material data manager allows users to create a material database for SYSWELD. You only deal with data in
Microsoft Excel. The thermo-physical properties of all common steel classes are built in. The result is a database in
SYSWELD format that includes all data necessary to perform transient analyses.

NEW GRAPHIC USER ENVIRONMENT TO SET UP AND RUN WELDING SIMULATIONS

VISUAL-WELD has been designed with the objective to give you easy access to more than 100 man-years of experience
in welding simulation. Running the SYSWELD solver, VISUAL-WELD offers the best possible combination of userfriendliness and result quality.

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SOLVING HUGE MODELS WITH A DISTRIBUTED MEMORY PARALLEL VERSION IN A REASONABLE TIME
FRAME
A DMP version is available for Linux and Windows computers. It allows solving problems in a fraction of the time,
especially for larger, more element intense, models. Below you can see an illustration of speed increase vs. the
number of processors.

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10

Speed Up

6
CPU SYSWELD
ELAPSE SYSWELD
4

0
0

12

16

20

24

28

32

36

Nbr Processors

IMPROVEMENTS OF THE PRESENT VERSION IN BULLET POINTS

WELD PLANNER PACKAGE (SHRINKAGE METHOD)

Separation of components allows a more precise simulation of differences in weld sequences

Vastly improved weld sequence definition

PAM-ASSEMBLY PACKAGE (LOCAL-GLOBAL METHOD)

Multi Pass analysis is now possible

Structural stiffeners can be included
New sequence manager is provided
Distance measurements to the initial structure / defined planes can be calculated

WELDING PACKAGE (TRANSIENT METHOD)

The performance of Viscous-plastic post weld heat treatment has been improved
There is a collector manager to generate all required collectors
Weld trajectories are generated automatically
The weld path display has been improved
The weld sequence can be displayed
There is the capability to automatically generate reports

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LANGUAGE
The language of the software is exclusively English.
TOOLBOX CD
The Toolbox CD contains User Guides, Tutorials, and the Engineering Guide. It is delivered together with the SYSWELD
CD.

USERS GUIDES AND GETTING STARTED MANUALS

User Guides and the Getting Started Manuals are available for all elements of the Welding Simulation Suite. These
guides are integrated within the software, on the software CD, and are located in the chapter 01_Users_Guides of
the Toolbox CD. The WELD PLANNER and PAM-ASSEMBLY User Guides are included in the Distortion Engineering DVD.
STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIALS
Systematical tutorials are available for most elements of the Welding Simulation Suite. They are located on the
toolbox CD, in the chapter 02_Tutorials.
ENGINEERING GUIDE
SYSWELD includes an Engineering Guide that covers decades of experience. This is not to be confused with the usual
Users Guide. Rather than covering the usage of the software, it mainly deals with the translation of real cases into a
simulation model. It covers and explains the major simulation engineering knowledge as well as the pitfalls related to

The Finite Element method application

The simulation engineering ground

The Engineering Guide shows the most effective, and thus cost effective, ways to solve Industrial problems. The
arrangement of the chapters proceeds in the sequence of a typical study. The Engineering Guide is done in a way
that it can be easily read and understood. A prerequisite is a standard engineering education.
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Need to know how to - you will get the answers

From engineers for engineers
Includes detailed Engineering Guidelines and study specifications / quality control documents

The fields covered are

Most Important Items

Templates
Meshing
Material Properties
Process Parameters
Clamping
Computation
Post-Processing
Simulation Methodologies
Access to the Electronic Manuals and the Online-Help
How to use the Manuals
Literature Sources
FEM Course
FE Theory
Installation Tips
Microsoft Excel Tools
Tools

ONLINE MANUALS
The SYSWORLD software includes an extended set of electronic manuals. They cover the procedures of how to use the
software, but not the engineering part of the problem solution. The manuals can be split in manuals dedicated to
Heat Treatment, Welding and Welding Assembly, and manuals dedicated to the generic usage of the software. The
amount of manuals is large. Please refer to the chapter 12_Access_E_Manuals_Online_Help in the Engineering
Guide, to get access. A printed set of manuals may be ordered.
PAM-ASSEMBLY includes an online manual.
The WELD PLANNER does not yet include an online manual. The User Guide shows how to use WELD PLANNER; it comes
with the installation CD/DVD.
ONLINE HELP
The SYSWORLD software includes extended Online Help. Within the Advisors, you get additional help dedicated for the
Advisor Usage.
PAM-ASSEMBLY includes Online Help.
The WELD PLANNER does not include Online Help it is very easy to use.
The Microsoft Excel tools include basic Online Help they are as well very easy to use.
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MORE ABOUT THE DISTORTION ENGINEERI NG DVD

After the installation, you will find an orange Icon on the desktop,.

Double-click on this icon. You will find the following.

Double-click on WeldingDE 2010.0

Start PAM-ASSEMBLY or the WELD PLANNER by double-clicking the icons. Get more information on the installation, and
on how to manage license keys by double-clicking on Readme Welding DE 2010.0.
Attention: The SYSWELD solver is installed again, even if it has been already installed somewhere else. There is no
need to set any variables or links - it will work.
Double-click on Documentation. You will find reference manuals, release notes, user guides and the getting started
manuals.

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Alternatively, double-click on Examples. You will find examples and the Weld Planner Getting Started course.

The Weld Planner Getting Started Course folder includes a complete course to manage welding distortion
engineering with the shrinkage method. Chapter seven explains how to prepare and import meshes. This is valid as
well for the local-global method.

For PAM-ASSEMBLY, you will find two tutorials, which cover the block and the cross-section method.
You have access to a complete welding distortion engineering simulation solution under one icon. You can
manipulate meshes with a professional meshing tool, choose between shrinkage and a local-global method
depending on your needs, and analyze results in-depth, with up to date post-processing. Any background
information you are looking for is also included.
PRE-COMPUTED EXAMPLES

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All software components of The Welding Simulation Suite are delivered with pre-defined examples. Many more
examples are included in the engineering guide and in the training courses, as well as in the tutorials. The present
examples cover all practical situations.
MORE ON POST PROCESSING
VISUAL VIEWER STARTING FROM V 5.5
Starting with version 5.5, VISUAL VIEWER has been completely overhauled to provide post-processing dedicated to
welding and heat treatment.
In the context bar, you can switch between Welding and Heat Treatment, Explicit, and Implicit. If you switch to
Welding and Heat Treatment, you will find a graphic user interface, which is simplified as much as possible. It offers
only the functionality that is needed.

Context bar

The following result options are gathered in one icon box:

Animation Control
Contour
Section Cut
Iso Surfaces and Lines
Model Synchronization
Model Difference

Result options

The GUI is shown below.

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VISUAL VIEWER 5.5 Graphic User Interface

Just double-click on the spectrum or a title the control will pop up.

Activation of controls with a double-click to Animate the evolution of results on demand

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Animation of results with animation control

Compare two model variants synchronize the display, show the differences in a new window and animate it step by
step.

Distortion comparison of model variants (the difference of the two models is at the right side) and animation.

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Generate a cross section and move it through the model, with many display options.

Phase proportions in the cross section

Load a result file, display different result types, synchronize the display windows and animate the evolution of results
step by step, with individual scaling.

Temperature, stress, distortion and plastic strains synchronized and animated

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Display the evolution of results with graphs.

Evolution of the temperature at a node

GETTING MORE INFORMATION
RELEASE NOTES
The release notes are included in the DVDs.
THE WELDING SIMULATION SUITE INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Ask your local dealer for the 130 page document with all the details.

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