Elastic-plastic modeling of the residual stresses caused by laser beam welding in aerospace structures

An appropriate joining technology is the laser beam welding process, because of its low localized energy input leading to low distortion, high strength of the joint and high processing speeds. The growing of aircraft industry in reducing the weight of aerospace structure has led the introduction of laser beam welding into the fabrication of aerospace structure with stiffeners, instead of riveted joints. In the present paper an analytical model for calculation of the residual stresses induced by laser welding is proposed and numerically validated. The aim of this work is to study the transverse residual stress distribution of plates made of an aluminum alloy 6061-T6, which is used for fabrication of fuselage panels. The results show that, if the maximum stress amount induced in the workpiece does not exceed the material yield stress, no plastic penetration will occur and there will be no residual stress. It was found that high stresses are developing close to the plate surface while these stresses decrease rapidly to almost zero values at the lower surface. An ideal elastic-plastic material curve was assumed. Good accordance is found between the calculated and numerical results.