Residual stresses and distortion are of the main disadvantages of welding process which determining the amount and distribution of them have great importance in the design of structures, especially in the space industry. In this study, a finite element method is used to analyze the thermo- mechanical behavior of a spherical shell due to TIG welding. The spherical shell is made of titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) with 2 mm thickness. The modeling of welding process is based on an uncoupled thermo- mechanical coupling. TIG welding is examined for six cases based on current intensity and welding progress speed setting the voltage on 12 V in all cases. Distribution of temperature and residual stresses caused by TIG welding of the titanium spherical shell have been extracted and compared among the six different cases. The effects of current intensity and welding progress speed on shell distortion and residual stress have been investigated. The results showed that increasing the current intensity and decreasing the welding progress speed have the most effects on longitudinal residual stresses which the amount of this increasing reached to %44 for decreasing the welding progress speed. Welding distortion increases to maximum %132 by increasing current and decreasing welding progress speed.

Keywords: Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V), TIG welding, Residual stresses, finite element method, Spherical shell

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