simulate welded joints

[antonio_sanchezK7EQX]

Hello,

I am doing the static simulation of a container, which has many welded joints between tubes, different faces...

I was wondering if there is any command that simulates these welded joints.

Thank you very much.

[henderh]

Hi @antonio_sanchezK7EQX,

Unfortunately, Fusion Simulation doesn't offer special consideration for welded joints, or weld damage in FEA calculations. As with many FEA packages the weld bead is treated as a conventional BRep solid geometric body. As such, the results won't match real-life where many process and material transformation effects (heat affected zones, impurity inclusions, etc.) could be a significant factor.

If the weld bead bodies are to be included to act as the primary load paths, the study setup should be adjusted to reflect this in the Contacts:

1. Generate Automatic Contacts
2. Since we don't want the loads to transfer via the automatic bonded contacts at the locations where there are faces mated with each other, but these 'face-face interfaces' aren't actually bonded in real-life. Therefore, those will need to be edited so they're not treated as bonded.
   • This can be a semi-tedious procedure if there are many welded connections. However, there is a right-click context menu command called 'Select Related Contacts' that appears when a body / face is selected that is part of a contact pair in the model canvas. This will open the Contacts Manager dialog to that contact in focus.
   • For example, in a simple butt weld the 'edge faces' of the plates shouldn't have a bonded contact, it should be suppressed or changed to something like Separation.
3. The bonded contacts should now transfer all the load(s) from one body to the other via the weld bead bodies exclusively

Please be aware the limitations still exist where the numerical results near, and at the weld surfaces will likely not be accurate to real-life. However, if you use the Slice Plane Inspect tool to peer inside the weld bead body, the stress values in the weld bead's throat area should be able to reflect real-life results accurately.

If the above approach doesn't produce satisfactory results, Autodesk Inventor has design calculator tools that are specialized for welds which may be a useful alternative:

• https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-1AAC3F08-5633-4913-B667-3811C5C79616
• 

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions, comments, or suggestions.

Best regards,