Abaqus Welding Interface Plugin

Abaqus Welding Interface Plugin

The Abaqus Welding Interface plugin (AWI) outlined in this documentation significantly enhances two- and three-dimensional welding simulations by automating many of the labor-intensive tasks involved in building a weld model. Within the plugin environment, analysts can complete a few dialog boxes with basic information relevant to the entire welding process, select the weld beads from the viewport, and optionally configure a custom weld pass sequence or allow the plugin to define the passes automatically.

The AWI plugin then generates all necessary analysis steps with the appropriate data, establishes energy transport boundary conditions for each step, creates sets for sensor output requests, and constructs the complete thermal model, followed by the automatic generation of the corresponding mechanical model for thermal stress analysis.

Welding simulations are complex and typically require precise representations of geometric features, multiple weld passes, non-linear temperature-dependent material properties, thermal and structural boundary conditions, and more. Capturing all these details demands considerable user effort. Although Abaqus has long offered analysis capabilities for modeling welding processes, enhanced by extensive user subroutines, the setup of weld models—particularly the preprocessing stage—has remained a time-consuming aspect of the workflow.

Abaqus 2017 is the final version supported. The original AWI plugin distributed by Simulia is not compatible with Abaqus 2023. Its replacement is the QustomWeld plugin, which can be acquired from QustomApps.

Abaqus Workshops/ Tutorials

• Workshop 1: Multi-pass Pipe Welding Analysis – 2D Welding Simulations
• Workshop 1: Multi-pass Pipe Welding Analysis – 3D Welding Simulations

Installing The Plugin

Extract the contents of the zip folder into a subdirectory of the abaqus_plugins folder, which can either be located in the

• abaqus_dircodepythonlibabaqus_plugins where abaqus_dir is the Abaqus parent directory or,
• home directory (in which case the plugin will be available whenever Abaqus is run) or,
• within the current working directory of your Abaqus/CAE session.

Compatibility

The Abaqus plugin is designed to be compatible with Abaqus/CAE 2017.

Updates

Version 2017

Who this plugin is for:

• Engineering or science students and professionals who work in the welding process
• Advanced students, Ph.D. students, or researchers for their Abaqus FEA projects
• Any Abaqus Application Engineer who is involved with various daily simulation projects

What you’ll gain