Modelling welding residual stress and distortion: current and future research trends

Modelling of welding distortion and residual stress has been an active research area since the late 1970s. Significant progress has been achieved since, especially in the areas of material modelling and investigation of three-dimensional geometries. This paper discusses some of the more recent developments in modelling residual stress and distortion and suggests issues for further research. The topics include, consideration of thermal transport in residual stress and distortion modelling, the development of applied strain methods for very large and complex structures, modelling of friction stir welding, sensitivity analysis and adaptive meshing.