Welding and Joining

New Solution To Improve Reliability Of Welded Joints

2009-04-14T09:31:00.001-07:00

Dassault Systemes (DS) today announced the availability of Verity for Abaqus, from the DS SIMULIA brand, for simulating realistic structural stress in welded joints and other connections.

“Power Plant components are more prone to fail at the weld points due to vibrations, pressure and temperature transients, and corrosion,” stated Mahesh Kailasam, Energy Industry Lead, SIMULIA. “These potential failure points are why it is important to use the most advanced simulation technologies to assess weld integrity and to guide design modifications for improving weld performance. Verity for Abaqus provides engineers with just such a solution to help improve the safety of pressure vessels, piping, and other critical components in power plants.”

Verity for Abaqus, a new add-on product for Abaqus FEA software, enables engineers to easily and accurately predict a consistent stress characterization for welded joints in industrial applications such as pressure vessels, piping, storage tanks, offshore platforms, and construction equipment. The new product is based on the Verity mesh-insensitive structural stress method from Battelle, the world’s largest non-profit independent research and development organization.

In addition to welded joints, the Verity structural stress method can also be applied to structures with geometrical notches such as adhesive joints, mechanically fastened joints, electronic packages, and manufacturing notches that exhibit stress concentrations due to loading. The method has been adopted in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Division 2 Code and API 579/ASME FFS-1 Codes for Fitness-for-Service assessments based on allowable stress methods and plastic collapse loads.

“Due to mesh sensitivities in finite element models, it is difficult for engineers to accurately characterize structural stress in welded joints and other discontinuities, and this often results in unreliable fatigue life prediction,” stated Steve Crowley, director of product management, SIMULIA, Dassault Systemes. “By leveraging Battelle’s technology, Verity for Abaqus provides a mesh-insensitive solution and enables engineers to improve reliability and safety of structures that use welds or other joining techniques such as soldering or brazing.”

In the nuclear power industry, Verity for Abaqus helps engineers to more accurately evaluate weld performance of mission-critical components and systems such as pressure vessels to reduce maintenance and in-situ physical inspection. In the oil and gas industry, benefits include improved operational availability of physical systems such as pipelines and offshore structures. “The industry challenge of meeting regulations for structural stress of welded joints requires new technology and methods,” stated Spencer Pugh, Vice President for Battelle’s Industrial and International market sector. “By integrating our Verity technology with Abaqus, SIMULIA is providing a unique simulation solution that enables companies to analyze accurate weld performance, lower development costs, and accelerate their design and implementation processes.”

Battelle is the world’s largest non-profit independent research and development organization, providing innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing needs through its four global businesses: Laboratory Management, National Security, Energy Technology, and Health and Life Sciences. It advances scientific discovery and application by conducting $5.2 billion in global R&D annually through contract research, laboratory management, and technology commercialization. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Battelle oversees 20,400 employees in more than 130 locations worldwide, including seven national laboratories which Battelle manages or co-manages for the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Battelle’s Global National Security business applies science and technology to solve complex technical challenges for the military services and federal agencies. Including the operations of national laboratories, Battelle annually performs nearly $1.6 billion in national security-related work contributing to advances in chemical and biological defense, homeland security, armor, technology refreshment, and undersea technology.

SIMULIA is the Dassault Systemes brand that delivers a scalable portfolio of Realistic Simulation solutions including the Abaqus product suite for Unified Finite Element Analysis, multiphysics solutions for insight into challenging engineering problems, and SIMULIA SLM for managing simulation data, processes, and intellectual property. By building on established technology, respected quality, and superior customer service, SIMULIA makes realistic simulation an integral business practice that improves product performance, reduces physical prototypes, and drives innovation. Headquartered in Providence, RI, USA, SIMULIA provides sales, services, and support through a global network of regional offices and distributors.

As a leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Dassault Systemes brings value to more than 100,000 customers in 80 countries. A pioneer in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systemes develops and markets PLM application software and services that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. The Dassault Systemes portfolio consists of CATIA for designing the virtual product - SolidWorks for 3D mechanical design - DELMIA for virtual production - SIMULIA for virtual testing - ENOVIA for global collaborative lifecycle management, and 3DVIA for online 3D lifelike experiences. Dassault Systemes’ shares are listed on Euronext Paris (#13065, DSY.PA) and Dassault Systemes’ ADRs may be traded on the US Over-The-Counter (OTC) market (DASTY).

Murray plans to build upon interdisciplinary vision for future of SEAS Dean Breaks Barriers

2009-04-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

When Cherry A. Murray was applying to college, she says her older brother, then a physics graduate student at MIT, told her, “There’s no way you can succeed in physics, and definitely not at MIT.”

So she went to MIT. And majored in physics.

Today she is a world-renowned physicist, president of the American Physical Society, and the incoming Dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a role she assumes at time of great financial turmoil for Harvard’s schools.

But colleagues say Murray’s take-charge attitude and experience in management at Bell Labs—where she served as a senior vice president while it was also experiencing budgetary woes—are strong qualifications for the challenge of building up the fledgling school in an era of restricted resources.

“She was very bold in the kind of things she would do,” says Bell colleague David J. Bishop. “She won’t shy away from a fight.”

Murray says she was drawn to Harvard in part with the aim of furthering the SEAS charge to provide its students with an interdisciplinary education, but adds she hopes to expand its reach to ensure all Harvard students graduate with a knowledge of science.

“By and large, people who come through Harvard end up being world leaders,” says Murray. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they understood technology?”

RISING THROUGH THE RANKS

When Murray arrived at MIT, she says she was one of only three women in her physics class out of approximately 100 students—but that didn’t faze her.

“At MIT you either hate it or you love it,” Murray says. “And I absolutely loved it.”

Murray took readily to the experimental demands of applied physics, completing her senior thesis studying excitations in superfluid helium with physics professor Thomas J. Greytak, a difficult project that involved building her own homemade helium fridge.

“The [parts] kept plugging up and there were several leaks and other excitements,” says Murray. “You actually had to make everything back in those days to do your experiments.”

After completing her senior thesis, Murray was accepted to several graduate schools, but stayed at MIT, because all the others seemed “sleepy.”

She continued working with Greytak on a surface physics experiment that required her to spend hours welding in the machine shop building a vacuum system.

When she received an IBM Fellowship midway through her thesis work, she says she walked into Greytak’s office to ask if she should take the unorthodox step of interrupting her academic career for an internship in industry.

“His reaction was kind of interesting,” Murray says. “He fell off his chair, and I thought, ‘Oh well, never mind that.’”

But the next day, she says Greytak came to her office and told her she should intern at the prestigious Bell Labs, where he had done research as an undergraduate.

The experience resulted in her joining Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff after she received her doctorate.

“Bell Labs was a unique phenomenon in the history of science,” says Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics at SEAS who was at Bell Labs with Murray. “You were working at the frontier of science and technology—it was a whirlwind of innovation and invention.”

In an environment she describes as simultaneously competitive and collaborative, Murray rose to become the Senior Vice President of Physical Sciences, one of the highest positions held by a woman at Bell Labs.

“I have certainly been extremely lucky in my career in that I don’t feel like I have been hampered tremendously,” Murray says. “Obviously there is unconscious gender bias in this society, so of course I’m affected by that.”

But while vice president, she says her division’s budget and staff were slashed amid multiple reorganizations of the Labs, taking a significant toll on physical sciences research there.

Bishop credits Murray with working tirelessly to rebuild Bell’s physical sciences division.

“She is extremely effective both as a scientist but also as a scientific leader,” says Bishop. “The folks at Harvard are lucky to get someone like her.”

Murray’s drive was not lost on another director at Bell—SEAS founding Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti.

“He was head of materials science and was trying to recruit me, but I went into physics instead,” Murray says.

But though Venky, who remains a professor of engineering and applied sciences at SEAS, failed to convince Murray to join his specialty, he did manage to help get Murray to join his school, where she appears poised to continue his interdisciplinary vision for SEAS.

PHYSICS FOR ALL

Murray says she was attracted to SEAS by its interdisciplinary nature and focus on applied science—while always keeping the question “Why am I doing this?” in mind.

“We have some serious problems that Harvard can address, including global health, clean energy technologies, figuring out what is happening to the climate system and the planet, and finding economic security,” Murray says. “In all of those areas, SEAS is absolutely perfect for Harvard to have a major impact.”

Echoing Venky’s vision, Murray says she believes that we can only solve these problems through interdisciplinary learning and by educating leaders who can understand science.

She says she will continue to develop the Technology, Science and Society concentration and the Bioengineering concentration for undergraduates as well as work to establish connections with Harvard’s other schools.

“We have all these horizontal interactions between SEAS and systems biology and the Medical School, and I think she’ll be great in establishing bridges,” says Capasso.

Colleagues say her experience as both an experimentalist and as a manager is the right combination for leading SEAS.

“She is able to look at both the big picture and at details, and that’s not a common thing,” says Capasso. “She has this impressive management experience. We need someone who has both the vision but also knows how to run things.”

Automatic pulsed-TIG welding provides relatively high

2009-03-29T04:42:00.000-07:00

Automatic pulsed-TIG welding provides relatively high, but accurately controlled heat input and allows gaps to be bridged effectively when welding 25 CrMo4 steel motorbike frames, said TPS-Fronius.

TPS-Fronius reported that Austrian motorbike builder, KTM, in Mattighofen is using automated pulsed-TIG welding for joining frame sections for its RC8 bicycle.

Fronius said that the technique offers a 90% degree of automation.

With regard to strength, independent test engineers have declared themselves satisfied with the results.

The results also met the strict criteria of the commercial managers at KTM and the bikers.

The various technical experts have responded positively to the MagicWave 4000 technique from Fronius.

Not only do the weld seams need to be strong, we need to look nice .

The RC8 road bicycle is one of KTM's latest and most successful models.

All the joins in the RC8 frame are therefore TIG-welded (TIG = tungsten inert gas).

The traditional rippled TIG weld seam conveys the sense of prestige and quality that end customers are always looking for, said fronius.

This is generally some two-thirds below that achieved using the more modern MAG welding methods (MAG = metal active gas).

However, the high seam quality that TIG welding provides does have one drawback: relatively low productivity.

* developing pulsed-TIG automation - KTM's technical experts have devoted two years to this development project, and the end result is 90% automation of frame production.

we eventually made nice a significant amount of the productivity shortcomings of TIG compared with the MAG technique.

Since the start of 2008, the robot welding plant has been producing RC8 frames at full capacity on a three-shift technique.

Production manager at KTM, Josef Baier, said: "This way we can produce particularly fine, clean TIG seams.

The components used are 1.2mm sheets and tubing made from a type of material designated 25 CrMo4.

Our welding technique of choice is MagicWave from Fronius".

A special in-house developed pallet feeding technique feeds the subassemblies to an ABB robot until the frame is complete.

The effective throat thickness of the fillet and single-V butt welds is 2mm, and the gaps to be bridged are 2mm wide.

Fronius told manufacturingtalk that the reason that TIG welding is so successful from a technical point of view is its virtually perfect weld toe.

The joined tubing sections can withstand the mechanical and dynamic stress of being driven on a road or around a motocross track.

The pulses that are typical of the TIG technique cause the filler material to melt on in the form of a series of scallops.

The use in TIG pulse welding of the relatively high, but accurately controlled heat input, allows gaps to be bridged effectively and perfect roots to be achieved.

Fusion at the start and end of a seam is greatly improved, when welding tubes.

ABB has launched the IRB1600 ID arc welding robot with an extended reach and integrated cabling

2009-03-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

ABB has launched the IRB1600 ID arc welding robot with an extended reach & integrated cabling & can handle payloads up to 4kg.

ABB Robotics said that metal product manufacturers can now improve production output & reduce capital costs by using ABB's IRB1600 ID Integrated Dressing (ID) robot.

The IRB 1600ID has an extended reach of 1.5m, enabling it to access areas that are difficult to reach, ensuring manufacturers have an extreme degree of control over welding operations.

It features an extended reach & integrated cabling.

Additional flexibility is provided by an increased payload of up to 4kg, enabling the IRB1600ID to be used in a broader range of applications, because the arm is can handle different types of welding equipment.

* Integrated dressing - the IRB1600ID's integrated dressing is designed to keep all cables inside the upper arm of the robot, reducing the probability of damage from sharp edges snagging on exposed cables, which can be costly & time consuming to fix.

The new dress pack is designed to protect essential parts, but also to eliminate blind spots, which on a conventional robot are caused by the external routing & unpredictable motion of the dress pack whilst in operation.

When compared with conventional robot models, where programmers attempt to predict certain aspects of movement during the welding method, IRB 1600ID allows the dress pack to follow every motion of the robot arm, without swinging or causing wear & reducing cable lifetime.

In this way it ensures a longer & more predictable lifetime.

The Integrated Dressing also makes the robot's outer dimensions smaller when compared with conventional robots, said ABB.

The feature extends the robot system's real working range, a crucial factor when welding on fixtures with a complex geometry.

It also eliminates the risk of damaging the dress pack in case of collision with the fixture.

The integration of the IRB 1600ID minimises stoppage time through less wear & tear on moving parts & a predictable, defined production cycle which increases the robot's reliability & justifies long term investment.

Carl Cloos Schweisstechnik will present new welding machine and robotic technology at Euroblech 2008 trade fair

2009-03-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

The Cold Process (CP) for thin plate welding, laser hybrid and Tandem processes will demonstrate high efficiency in robot-supported manufacture on the most varied components.

Carl Cloos Schweisstechnik will present new welding machine and robotic technology at Euroblech 2008 trade fair.

This reduces component distortion and the burn off of the coating is significantly reduced when MIG-brazing coated plates.

A feature of the GLC 353 Quinto CP high end pulsed arc welding machine is the low heat input in the weld seam.

The CP process offers optimised gap bridging ability and increased weld speeds, when welding thin aluminium plate.

Another benefit of Cloos CP technology is the low dilution of the filler material with the base metal when hardfacing.

three micro-processor controlled GLC 603 Quinto pulsed arc power sources are electronically synchronised, feeding five electrically insulated weld current circuits, making it possible to set the welding parameters separately for each arc for an optimum process run.

The MIG/MAG Tandem process developed by Cloos offers advantages for universal welding tasks.

The laser hybrid welding head with an integrated seventh robot axis provides optimum torch orientation, ensuring easy tracking of the weld seam, even when changing welding direction and a good coupling of the laser beam in the required MIG/MAG torch position.

This results in good seam quality with low spatter, increased deposition rates and high weld speeds.

This avoids unwanted welding interruptions on contours and ensures shorter cycle times for the robotic welding process.

The integrated process monitoring sensors offer excellent potential for a greater variety of seam types in universal application.

Combined with the synergy-controlled pulsed arc power sources in the Qineo-Pulse series, Cloos will demonstrate the high-capacity process speedy Weld.

The 20kW laser gives an advantage when welding thick components made from different materials.

As a result of the constricted high capacity spray arc, deep penetration with high deposition rates can be achieved at high wire feed speeds.

The process is suitable for high capacity welding of thick walled steels.

The 280A plasma-arc power source Hifocus 280 is equipped with a swirl-gas fine focus torch and cuts bevels with angles between 0-45deg quickly and with a low oxygen consumption.

A flexible overhead mounted Romat 320 industrial robot will demonstrate high capacity plasma-arc cutting using offline programming.

Therefore both mild steel and high-alloy steel with material thicknesses of 0.5 to 50mm can be cut cleanly and burr-free.

For the weld seam preparation on unalloyed steel, the oxygen cutting technology ensures metallurgically perfect cutting surfaces that do not require cost-intensive rework.

Plasma-arc cutting with Hifocus technology has a quality similar to the laser process and a high cutting speed.

Using the Moses offline programming system, robot cutting and welding tasks can be programmed in seconds.

Moses can generate cut outs on tubes, containers and base plates with weld seam preparation as efficiently as the welding paths when welding tube sockets.

The system can automatically calculate complex tube penetrations and cuts and generate complete robot programs, including synchronous control of component positioners and measurement of component tolerances by the robot.

Cutting using Cloos robots will become more economical even for the smallest production batches.

High-capacity Cloos laser sensors will be demonstrated in a nine-axis robot welding system.

The CSE sensors are non-contact, optical measuring systems for seam tracking and determination of weld position/geometry when robot welding.

The Romat 350 industrial robot has a 1.5m linear track that extends the working range for optimum operation.

The search process of the CSE sensor is effected offline before the actual welding starts.

They operate on the basis of a distance measurement using a low-capacity laser beam (up to 50mW).

The workpiece is scanned, the return signal is electronically evaluated and significant positions are recognised.

During welding the weld parameters are adapted in line with the previously determined seam geometry.

Cloos will also present five versions of its modular welding power sources with synergy mode from the Qineo series.

The manual Qineo Step welding machine from 180 - 600A is suitable for use in industry and commerce.

In synergic operation mode the welder can use the factory-programmed parameter settings (synergic characteristic curves) where, depending on the step-switch position, all the adjustments relevant to the welding process are stored.

The step-switch series is obtainable in compact design or in the capacity range from 350A and above with a separate wire drive unit for a larger work radius.

If more flexibility is required, operation can be carried out on the remote control.

The Qineo Step is obtainable in the Eco or Master (thyristor-regulated throttle) versions and can be gas or water cooled according to the requirement.

All systems guarantee optimum ignition characteristics with low spatter and a quiet and stable arc and provide excellent weld seam quality when welding with short or spray arc.

ABB has launched the IRB1600 ID arc welding robot with an extended reach and integrated cabling

2009-03-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

ABB has launched the IRB1600 ID arc welding robot with an extended reach and integrated cabling and can handle payloads up to 4kg.

ABB Robotics said that metal product manufacturers can now improve production output and reduce capital costs by using ABB's IRB1600 ID Integrated Dressing (ID) robot.

The IRB 1600ID has an extended reach of 1.5m, enabling it to access areas that are difficult to reach, ensuring manufacturers have an extreme degree of control over welding operations.

It features an extended reach and integrated cabling.

Additional flexibility is provided by an increased payload of up to 4kg, enabling the IRB1600ID to be used in a broader range of applications, because the arm is can handle different types of welding equipment.

* Integrated dressing - the IRB1600ID's integrated dressing is designed to keep all cables inside the upper arm of the robot, reducing the probability of damage from sharp edges snagging on exposed cables, which can be expensive and time consuming to fix.

The new dress pack is designed to protect essential parts, but also to eliminate blind spots, which on a conventional robot are caused by the external routing and unpredictable motion of the dress pack whilst in operation.

When compared with conventional robot models, where programmers attempt to predict certain aspects of movement during the welding technique, IRB 1600ID allows the dress pack to follow every motion of the robot arm, without swinging or causing wear and reducing cable lifetime.

The Integrated Dressing also makes the robot's outer dimensions smaller when compared with conventional robots, said ABB.

In this way it ensures a longer and more predictable lifetime.

The feature extends the robot system's real working range, a crucial factor when welding on fixtures with a complex geometry.

It also eliminates the risk of damaging the dress pack in case of collision with the fixture.

The integration of the IRB 1600ID minimises stoppage time through less wear and tear on moving parts and a predictable, defined production cycle which increases the robot's reliability and justifies long term investment.