S. H. Tsau, P. Michaleris, Penn State University, University Park, PA

Summary: Welding forms permanent plastic strains in structures. These plastic strains and the corresponding elastic components have high gradients transverse to the welding direction. In this work, a FEA method is developed for welding simulation. The method, CAH-adaptive, implements condensation (and recovery) theory along with anisotropic h-adaptivity, which performs independent refining and coarsening in the spatial dimensions.