Simulation of laser welding in sandwich rocket nozzle

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis has been carried out at GKN Aerospace. GKN is a member of European Space Agency, designing and manufacturing rocket-nozzles for the Ariane rockets. The manufacturing process entails many welds. Weld-simulations have been made to investigate stresses and plastic strains on simplified geometries. Plastic strains have been evaluated parallel and normal to the weld for plate geometries of shell-elements with rectangular cross-section and sandwich-cross-section, using the FEM-program MSC.marc. Results shows that plate width and length have negligible effect on the plastic strains when one weld is made. A comparison between a sandwich-sector cone and a sandwich plate was made, to investigate how plastic strains and stresses were affected of geometry. Plastic strains and stresses parallel the weld are the same. Plastic strains and stresses normal the weld are affected by changing geometry. Studies on differences in stresses between solid and shell elements propose use of solid elements near the weld region, if stresses are of interest.