Approximated analytical approach for temperature calculation in pulsed arc welding

In the modern welding industry, numerical modeling and simulation has become an invaluable tool in order to set up or tune new welding processes. For this purpose, the temperature distribution in a work piece can be modeled by a variety of different heat source models and numerical methods, including finite elements, volumes or differences. Arc welding applications usually employ pulsed power sources to increase efficiency and precision, which, by having to choose finer time stepping, increases the numerical expenses required in the simulations. Instead of the classical methods, in this contribution a Green’s function approach and the classical Goldak double-ellipsoidal heat source is used, getting an approximate analytical solution for the temperature field for a pulsed arc welding process, which is computationally efficient to evaluate and thus highly applicable. We derive an explicit equation for the temperature distribution, where only the time integration has to be solved approximately, run numerical tests and compare the results with FEM calculations.