A welding process might be just one of several subsequent manufacturing steps, usually placed somewhere in the manufacturing process chain. A manufacturing process chain may cover different technologies like casting, forging, heat treatment, machining, or joining. Welding itself, especially if it comes to welding of complex assemblies, often happens in several steps, with cooling, unclamping or heat treatment in between.
The capability of transferring simulation results from one manufacturing step to subsequent steps is a prerequisite for accuracy in the simulation process chain.
Simufact products like Simufact Welding and Simufact Forming provide the so-called “prestate capability”. During and after the simulation solver writes special result files, called “prestate files” with the file extension “SPR”. These files can be used for the setup of subsequent process steps, they contain, together with usual result files of Simufact products, all information needed for starting a new simulation using components with already present results.
There are two options for using this functionality.
Before the simulation starts the user is able to select which result values are to be transferred.
Another option to export simulation data - especially if it comes to data transfer to some 3rd party software - is the UNV data export. The export creates universal files that can be used e.g. for structural, strength and fatigue analysis in FE packages supporting the import of this format.
The format contains selected meshes with selected nodal result values at chosen increment. Simufact's universal interface is build according to the specification given by:
Simufact's universal interface is concentrating on those parts of the format specifications, which are relevant for Simufact-specific results.
The settings made for export can be saved to a JSON file. The file can be used for export again without the need to redo the settings.
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