L. Zhang, Penn State University, Universtiy Park, PA; P. Michaleris, Penn State University, University Park, PA; J. Sun, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China; P. Marugabandhu, Maglev Inc., Monroeville, PA

Summary: A 3D to 3D decoupled plastic strain method has been developed to predict the welding distortions in large structures with several welds. In this method, the six components of the plastic strain of each weld are calculated by performing a 3D moving source analysis on a small 3D model with a shorter length, then the plastic strain components of the small models are mapped and superposed to a large 3D structural model to obtain the final distortion results. An interpolation algorithm is developed for mapping between meshes with different densities.