Adoption of High Performance Computational (HPC) Modeling Software for Widespread Use in the Manufacture of Welded Structures

Historically, companies that fabricate structural parts/pieces that include welding as part of their fabrication process have relied on an iterative trial-and-error method to establish manufacturing and fabrication processes for new products. This approach is inefficient. A few US Industries that have used virtual design and analysis tools have developed environmentally-friendly fabrication processes, improved quality and performance, and reduced manufacturing costs to remain globally competitive. The Phase II project leverages an existing, state-of-the-art software code Virtual Fabrication Technology (VFT) used currently to design and model large welded structures prior to fabrication - to a broader range of applications and products for widespread use by small and medium-sized companies. This will enable these companies to have on-demand access both to weld modeling training and to low cost weld simulation technology through a cloud-based high performance computing portal. In Phase I the VFT code, which was tied to an expensive commercial solver, was modified to perform efficiently on a high performance open source finite element code called WARP3D. The results from Phase I clearly demonstrated that the software code produces high speed accurate solutions and can enable these fabricators to overcome the barriers to high performance computing using an easy-to-use portal. The Phase II program goal is to complete the adaptation of a (HPC) software code so it is accessible and useable to small and medium sized firms to improve their manufacturing and fabrication processes that yield products that have higher quality at reduced costs. The new software will be hosted on the Manufacturing and Polymer (M & amp;P) Portal within the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) at the Ohio State University. This adapted version results in very rapid solution times and a new menu driven graphical user interface (GUI) so that the user does not have to be an expert in computational methods to use the code effectively. The long term (Phase III) goal is automate the software to permit fatigue and corrosion life prediction, optimization routines to automate the weld design process to design weld strategies that minimize distortions, reduce cost, and result in robust designs.