Numerical simulation of thermal phenomena and phase transformations in laser-arc hybrid welded joints

Abstract

The paper concerns mathematical and numerical modelling of temperature field with convective motion of liquid metal in the melted zone taken into account and numerical estimation of structure composition of a plate made of S355 steel, butt-welded by laser-arc hybrid welding technique. Coupled transport phenomena, including heat transfer and fluid flow in the melted zone, were described respectively by transient heat transfer equation with convective term and Navier-Stokes equation. Latent heat associated with the material's state changes and latent heat of phase transformations in solid state were taken into consideration in the solution algorithm. The kinetics of phase transformations and volumetric fractions of arising phases were calculated on the basis of the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami (JMA) and Koistinen-Marburger (KM) classic mathematical models. In modelling of phase transformations during heating continuous heating transformation (CHT) diagram was used, whereas continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagram was used in modelling of phase transformations during cooling of welded steel. Transient heat transfer equation was solved using finite element method in Petrov-Galerkin formulation and Navier-Stokes equation was solved in Chorin's projection method. The solution algorithms were implemented in ObjectPascal programming language.