Abstract
The welding deformation of a hull structure in the shipbuilding industry is Inevitable at each assembly stage. The geometric inaccuracy caused by the welding deformation tends to preclude the introduction of automation and mechanization and needs the additional man-hours for the adjusting work at the following assembly stage. To overcome this problem, a distortion control method should be applied. For this purpose, it is necessary to develop an accurateprediction method which can explicitly account for the influence of various factors on the welding deformation. The validity of the prediction method must be also clarified through experiments. This paper is aimed at deriving the simple prediction model for fillet welding deformations. For this purpose, the thermal elasto-plastic analysis varying the welding conditions and plate thickness has been performed. On the basis of numerical results, the formulae for angular distortion and transverse shrinkage have been derived through the regression analysis. Experimental work has been also carried out to clarify the validity of numerical results. It has been found that the numerical results show a good agreement with those of experiments