Error estimation and accurate mapping based ALE formulation for 3D simulation of friction stir welding

An Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation is developed to simulate the different stages of the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) process with the FORGE3 (R) F.E. software. A splitting method is utilized: a) the material velocity/pressure and temperature fields are calculated, b) the mesh velocity is derived from the domain boundary evolution and an adaptive refinement criterion provided by error estimation, c) PI and PO variables are remapped. Different velocity computation and remap techniques have been investigated, providing significant improvement with respect to more standard approaches. The proposed ALE formulation is applied to FSW simulation. Steady state welding, but also transient phases are simulated, showing good robustness and accuracy of the developed formulation. Friction parameters are identified for an Eulerian steady state simulation by comparison with experimental results. Void formation can be simulated. Simulations of the transient plunge and welding phases help to better understand the deposition process that occurs at the trailing edge of the probe. Flexibility and robustness of the model finally allows investigating the influence of new tooling designs on the deposition process.