ANSYS/PREPSPOT: automated spot weld creation for FEM car body models

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ANSYS/PREPSPOT: automated spot weld creation for FEM car body models

Moosrainer, M.

It's a well known fact that the stiffness and fatigue properties of thin sheet components are considerably influenced by spot joints. Thus, an adequate spot joint model has to be used for static and dynamic FE analysis to account for the additional stiffness. Numerous publications are stressing this issue. However, the insertion of simplified (local) spot joint patches into an existing FE model of an arbitrary complex (global) structure still remains a cumbersome task for the analyst. For that reason, constructions like MPC equations and/or mesh independent spot welds are frequently used for that purpose. This paper is not meant as another contribution about the best modelling technique of spot joints but rather tries to present an effective way to automate the creation of ''classical'' spot joints (i.e. modelling the weld nugget by some standard shell and beam elements) into existing FE models of thin sheet components without any extra human modelling work. Examples are given that show the straightforward usage of ANSYS/PREPSPOT for complex structures like car bodies. The introduced solution reduces the time to insert spot joints in car body FE meshes from weeks to minutes. No manually set markers, node selections or beam connections are necessary. Further on, the usage of standard elements reflecting the local geometry of a spot joint can easily be adapted to experimentally obtained local stiffness properties.