Hi Venicio,
Since the results of our stress analysis show only the surface stresses, there isn't a way I know of to show the stresses within the weld beads themselves.
We do have a Weld strength calculator tool within our Design Accelerator commands in the Weld tab of the Ribbon in the assemblies environment that should help with the calculations.
That said, if you really want to see the stress "in" a weld, I have an idea of one way you can (sort of) get inside the weld using the 'symmetry method'. Use the weld prep panel and cut away 1/2 the model using an Extrusion cut. Then place a Frictionless constraint to the faces that were created by the cut. Of course use 1/2 the load value if the face that the load is applied is also cut in half. This will only work in symmetric models that have symmetric loading (example image attached).
I tried searching for an older post where weldments in FEA are discussed in more detail, but I haven't found them yet. Of course SA in Inventor cannot handle non-linear materials, as the weld and heat affected zone (HAZ) might be. The welds don't have any voids modeled, impurities introduced by non-shielding gasses and doesn't take into account any annealing or heat treatment, case hardening, and most importantly weld shape, etc. As such, please take extra care in interpreting the results.
I believe the best advantage of including welds in our FEA analysis is so that plates will be rigidly connected and loads will transfer closer to reality than by simply adding manual bonded contacts...
It might have been the distinguished Invkaos (sp?) user that has made great contributions in the simulation discussions in this newsgroup that said something about calculating the stress in the throat of the weld by handbook methods, perhaps via a pressure vessel industry publication.
Apologies for the late reply, I just noticed this post during a search for a different post.
Please let us know if you have additional questions, comments or suggestions.
Best regards, -Hugh
Hugh Henderson
QA Engineer (Fusion Simulation)
