ABSTRACT
The effect of clamping constraints during the erection process of construction assembly is analysed as concerns the welding residual stresses and distortions. The forced reduction of misalignments and gaps may lead to a considerable amount of pre-stresses in the welded assembly. Once the welding is made, and the assembly is released from the pre-welded fixtures, some stresses will remain due to the initial constraints, additionally to the welding induced residual stresses. The present work describes a numerical investigation of different mounting conditions considering the effect of pre-welding fixture induced forces and time of releasing the constraints. A butt-welded panel is modelled by employing the finite element method, and the transient thermo-mechanical analysis is applied to simulate the welding procedure. The results of simulating the aligning condition, as well as the corresponding releasing of initial constraints, are presented and compared with the butt-welded plate without the pre-stress due to the imposed tolerances.
