A boundary-element formalism for simulation of unsteady heat-transfer in welding

The welding process is characterised by a moving heat source, such as, an are, generating a transient temperature field which profoundly affects the properties of the welded material. Apart from solidification, annealing and phase transformation in the vicinity of the heat source, the moving heat source creates thermoelastic distortion on the solid surface. Analysis of the thermal transport on the welding surface has, therefore, attracted the attention of numerous workers in the past. Apart from a number of empirical and semi-empirical models as well as closed form analytical solutions, a variety of numerical techniques such as finite difference, finite element and moving boundary methods have been applied to solve the welding heat transfer problem. The boundary element method which has recently emerged as one of the computationally efficient methods, has found little application in welding. It has been the endeavour in the present study to develop a boundary element formalism of the thermal transport in welding. A software is being developed to implement the above algorithm.