Thermal Process Analysis in Welding Prototyping of Metal Structures

Using welding prototyping method to process metal parts can organize compact tissue and controllable dimensions at a lower cost. Welding is a transient heating and rapid cooling process. The changes of welding temperature field have an important impact on the quality of metal parts. In this paper, ANSYS is used to analyze thermal process of welding prototyping, to obtain welding temperature field and residual stress changes of metal structure in welding prototyping process. It is also used to analyze the impact of welding temperature field changes on the metal structure.