NUMERICAL PREDICTION OF FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN WELDING WITH A MOVING HEAT SOURCE

Abstract

An improved computational analysis is presented for the detailed prediction of heat transfer, phase change, and fluid flow during welding with a moving heat source. The governing equations are formulated in a reference frame attached to the heat source. A special feature in the formulation is that the primary unknown velocity is the convective velocity of the fluid with the motion of the heat source, resulting in additional source terms in the equations. The equations are solved using a control-volume-based computational method. The temperature and velocity fields and the time-temperature data are presented for two welding velocities to demonstrate the results using the new technique.